


Landslide

by gabsrambles



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Homelessness, Living on the Street, Teens, angsty, angstyangstangstMcangst, but working towards a happy ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:25:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Messy Lexa and her little brother Aden end up on the street, but before they do, Messy Lexa collides with Messy Clarke....</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Colliding

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for the feedback with my other works, lovely people :) Feedback is always appreciated.

The day Clarke saw the girl that was all cheekbones and shadowed eyes, something stilled in her chest and for a second, she wondered if she had forgotten how to breathe. High school was transitioning, was flowing, her sixteenth birthday just been and gone and everything felt that little bit different. The summer had passed, hot and hazy and filled with days by the pool, chlorine drying tight over her skin and the sun leaving her browned and hazy and like she could float through the rest of her life.

“What you staring at?”

Clarke blinked, her eyes tearing from the girl across the cafeteria. “Who´s that?”

“Who?” And of course Octavia turned, staring obviously, dark eyes narrowing as she took in the scene. “That chick? She was in our year four years ago and disappeared for a while, then came back a year below us. Um…Lexa?”

There was something about her clothes, they hung a little loose, a little haggard. Something that sat around the edges of her expression that Clarke didn´t recognise.

“Why do you care, anyway?”

Clarke tore her eyes away a second time, heat crawling along her cheeks. “I don´t.”

And then she´d forgotten the girl, for that moment, as Finn had slid into his chair next to her, his tray clattering on the table and his arm clattering over her shoulder. She sunk into him, the solidness, the heat of him and one by one her friends dropped into their seats and laughter started up while Wells told a story about his History teacher and Raven put some straws and forks together to make some kind of catapult, sending fries and grapes to slap across people´s cheeks.

The next week, Clarke saw her again. Her art class had gone up to the sports grounds to draw people in live action. It was easy, for Clarke, to sit and let the charcoal spill over her page, to shape the things that moved and melded in front of her into something tangible. A corner filled with feet at a ball, the fluidity caught and held on her paper. Trees spilt over a side, a shirtless teenager who should have been doing other things caught climbing the tree, his muscles tugging and pulling and evident. The flick of a ponytail as someone went to take a shot at goal. Clarke´s eyes traced the grounds for something else to capture and stopped again.

The ponytail belonged to that girl, to Lexa. Fingers stilled over the page, charcoal seeping into her blood to stain her insides, and Clarke watched as Lexa´s PE team won their soccer match solely thanks to her. There was a glint in her eyes, a spark absent the other week in the cafeteria and Clarke´s hands moved on their own accord, capturing it and immortalising that gleam on paper. Heat spread through Clarke´s chest and she swallowed hard, wondering why her eyes were glued to the muscles in Lexa´s arms, the pull of her calf when she kicked.

The next day, Clarke literally ran into Lexa in the hallway and felt her mouth go dry. An apology spilled from her lips and Lexa gave a one shouldered shrug, the green of her eye caught on Clarke´s.

“It´s okay.”

It wasn´t okay. There were dark smudges under Lexa´s eyes, but somehow that made the green stand out. There was a forest in those eyes, a foliage of secrets and depth that Clarke wanted to disappear into.

She licked her lips, suddenly feeling chapped, and the fact that she´d been rushing to meet Finn slipped from her mind completely. She leant against the locker next to her. “I´m Clarke.”

“Lexa.”

“Are you coming to Reyes´ party this weekend?”

Those eyes widened, eyebrows climbing. “What´s a Reyes?”

There was a quirk to Lexa´s lips that Clarke wanted to get lost in. She gave a huff of a laugh. “Raven Reyes. Captain of the soccer team?”

“Oh.”  There was a flash of something, a shadow that flittered across Lexa´s face. “I, uh, hadn´t heard anything about it.”

“You should come. It´s kind of, open invite. Her parents are away.”

There was a vacant nod, the shuffling of feet that hinted that Lexa was about to move on that sent a trill of desperation up Clarke´s spine. “Maybe.”

Before Lexa could leave, Clarke blurted out, “Why aren´t you on the team, anyway? I saw you score six goals in class the other day.”

The words had left her lips before Clarke had contemplated on them, had considered the fact that they proved she´d been watching Lexa. She wanted to regret them, to reel them back in to sit in her chest but Lexa had settled back against the lockers in a mirror of Clarke and she couldn´t feel any regret at all.

“I don´t like soccer.”

Clarke didn´t know the girl, but she knew that was a lie.

 

* * *

There were nights Lexa wanted to crawl out of her skin. To pull at herself until her seams fell apart in threads and she could pour out, grains of herself scattering over the floor. Some nights, when her house had been without an adult for more than a week, she felt like running. She´d jump a bus, and then a plane and disappear into another country and never be seen again. Her feet would lose themselves on paths built centuries upon centuries ago, fruit she´d never seen would explode over her tongue and her fingers would trace ruins time itself hadn´t been able to erase. And slowly, painfully, like stretching a canvas until it was the size it had been made for, she´d become who she was meant to be.

But then Aden would shuffle in to her room in the dead of the night, cheekbones sharp like hers but hair the colour of a father that wasn´t hers at all, and curl into her bed. Too big for it, at eight, but she´d never send him away and she´d lay and the breath of him would stitch up those holes in her, would pull her feet back until she accepted that she had to stay where she was.

That girl, the blonde with eyes that screamed oceans and skies, with hands that were stained in paint and wishes, had left a feeling like normalcy in Lexa´s chest, one that sat heavy as a stone when she walked her brother home from school, made him dinner with the last remnants of pasta in the cupboard and made sure he did his homework, brushed his teeth, went to bed. That stone just grew heavier as she just hoped her mother would be back the next day. They really were out of food this time.

That was how it could start. Too many times without lunch at school got noticed. The hang of clothes, the distracted look in a hungry kids face. That sent them down a road gone down twice before and Lexa couldn´t walk it again, had promised Aden they wouldn´t as his nails dug into her neck.

Her mother would be back the next day.

She buried her face in the back of Aden´s hair and breathed him in.

She had to be.

If she came home, there was some semblance of chance Lexa could go out that weekend, and shame sat heavy that that was a huge part of the reason she hoped her mother would come back, too. If Aden could go to a sleepover, there would be an adult around just in case.

By some chance, Lexa´s mother didn´t come back the next day, but she did come back the Friday, with blown wide pupils and a slur to her voice, but there. There and with money Lexa didn´t want to ask where it had come from. Aden, no longer tiny and easily supplicated, gave his mother a grim smile, his eyes only lighting up a little when she handed him a Nintendo DS.

“Thanks, Mom.”

And Lexa´s heart swelled, pushed against her ribs and choked her at the way he meant the words.

So the Saturday night, Lexa found herself at a party.

People spilled from room to room, the house huge, the property huge, the atmosphere huge—Lexa had walked a mile and a half from the bus to get there, a bottle pilfered from her mother´s collection in hand.

She hated alcohol, hated the burn, the smell. Hated the way it made her mother into someone Lexa swore she hadn´t been, once upon a time. But that may have been a false thing to swear to, a lie to sit heavy, because really Lexa barely remembered a time her mother was high on something, gambling what they had away, forgetting she had two children at home that needed her to be something.

But Lexa knew, even in her inexperience, you never turned up to a party without something. Her heart was thudding at the amount of people, the laughing, the shrieking, and she uncapped the bottle, taking a swig purely with the hope of faking some confidence, her face scrunching at the taste. She hadn´t spent much time with people her own age, wasn´t sure she could slide in comfortably and pretend she fit among them, worried about kissing, tests, the next final match and anything else in between.

Her feet ghosted room to room and something clenched when she realised she didn´t really know anyone. That missed year hung wide between her and everyone else there, and it wasn´t as if she had ever tried very hard before it, anyway. She never knew how, the ground that was meant to be common for them all to tread foreign under her own feet, let alone expecting someone else to attempt to step upon it.

Somehow, she ended up sitting outside on the grass after some conversation with an old classmate that started awkward but somehow ended up flowing, a river in its bed, smooth and easy. They´d shared a drink and a laugh and another boy had joined and held his hand up after he mentioned a goal he saw Lexa strike the in PE class. For a minute, his hand had hovered and Lexa had kind of just stared at it before she felt her lips tug on one side as she raised her hand to slap against his. He mentioned something about playing for the team and Lexa had started to sidle out of the conversation, too embarrassed to say she couldn´t afford the registration, the cleats, the shinpads, the afternoons busied in case Aden needed her, which was almost every one of them. The he´d mentioned a program the school ran, money available and Lexa left the conversation another twenty minutes later with something that felt a little like hope, a little like excitement, ballooning in her throat.

The grass under her was cold and the neck of the bottle was warm where her fingers wrapped around it. The sky was a blanket of whirling stars and black clouds above and Lexa tilted her head up, legs crossed, to watch them dance in front of her tipsy gaze. She felt warm inside, comfortable.

Then there was someone plopping next to her and fingers brushing over hers to steal the bottle from between her legs. A giggle washed over Lexa and she turned her head, struck by the sight of Clarke tipping the bottle back to take a sip, a loud "ugh" following the swallow. Lexa chuckled, the sounds husky in her throat, unfamiliar as she watched Clarke run a tongue over her lip, a tug pulling low in her stomach.

“Hey.”

Clarke turned to face her. “Hey. You made it.”

“That I did.”

Clarke held the bottle out and Lexa couldn't say no to the stormy offer in her eye and accepted it, taking a long sip.

“Are you having fun?” Clarke asked, something like delight painted across her features as she watched Lexa swallow the burning liquid down.

“I am.”

“You sound surprised.”

Lexa looked around, the noise filtering out the open doorway, people trickling through the doors, laughter and couples making out, then back to Clarke. “I suppose I am. This is not usually my scene.”

“Hmm.”  Clarke clicked her tongue and leant against Lexa, her shoulder warm, a heavy weight of young comfort. “And what is your scene?”

Lexa would have waded into Clarke´s eyes and never come out again if someone offered her the chance. She shrugged and said nothing, only offering the bottle to Clarke to take a sip.

When Clarke held it out again, Lexa tried to take it back, but with a laugh Clarke held on, fingers sticky with spilt spirits under Lexa´s thumb. She tugged, Lexa pulled towards her, gravity, and they tumbled together, a tangle on the ground. Clarke´s hair was like silk splayed out around her head, sunlight in the night, and Lexa´s fingers trailed through it, the strands fine against her skin. Clarke´s hand was pressed between their chests and Lexa was sure Clarke would be able to feel the thumping of her heart through muscle and bone and skin.

“Clarke!”

And with that they were pulled away, someone called ´O´ tugging them up and pulling grass out of Clarke´s hair with nimble fingers, her big dark eyes throwing a wink at Lexa. Brashness normally made her uncomfortable, but the motion sat easy on the shoulders of the tiny Octavia and Lexa found herself smiling. They were tugged inside to a game with a ping pong ball and cups and Lexa remembered the game from TV but had never played. It turned out she sucked at it, was terrible in fact and Clarke made a comment that she totally chose the wrong team, blowing a kiss to the boy across the table Lexa had seen Clarke nuzzle in the corridor at school the day before.

Both Clarke and Lexa ended up drunk, beyond tipsy, and the alcohol was burning in Lexa´s stomach, but she didn´t care, because Clarke was an affectionate person. Her hand ran down Lexa´s arm and her arm slung over Lexa´s shoulder. She was full of fist bumps and high fives, cheers and loud groans when they had to drink again. When they lost their second game, Clarke threw up her hands and shook her head.

“God no. No more. We´re shit.”

They gave up their place to others willing to take it. She tugged Lexa to the bathroom, a smile on her face and when they fell through the door and against the sink, they were wrapped in each other.

“I thought you had to pee?”

Clarke shrugged, her nose against Lexa´s neck and her breath sending shivers down Lexa´s back. “Not anymore.”

When her lips pressed to the sensitive skin over Lexa´s pounding pulse, Lexa´s own parted in a sigh. They trailed to her mouth and it was so easy to kiss her, to fall into the safety of Clarke´s warm mouth, the wetness of her tongue against her own. Fingers buried in her hair and Lexa´s nails scraped skin she exposed by tugging on Clarke´s shirt. Lexa had known, had known she could fall into Clarke and not crawl her way out, because why would she want to?

Hours later, Lexa stumbled through her front door, a thousand memories crashing into her of her mother doing the same thing, dragging in the smell of alcohol and disappointment. Something rebellious stirred under the disgust that swelled. Lexa was sixteen, was smart, was young, was desperate for something that tasted like normal, she could do this once.

Squaring her shoulders, swaying only a little, Lexa stumbled down the hallway, her keys clattering on a table to then drop heavily to the ground. For a moment, she eyed them, then decided it wasn´t worth the effort. Before she could turn to go to her room, Lexa sighed and turned for the living room, to walk through to get a glass of water from the kitchen. She paused in the door way, the blurry shape on the sofa slowly coming into focus. Lexa´s hand gripped the door frame, fingers biting into the wood.

“Aden?”

He was huddled in a ball. Lexa looked up at the clock above him, it was after three in morning.

He said nothing, so Lexa, dread rippling in her belly, walked over to sit next to him. When her hand ran across the plane of his shoulder blades, they quivered under her palm.

“Aden? Why aren´t you at your friends house?”

“Mum picked me up. Then she went out.” His voice was hoarse, scratched from hours of crying. “She went out and left me alone.”

Guilt flared and Lexa wrapped her arms completely around him, pulling him half into her lap, not caring how his legs didn´t fit anymore.

“She was gone, but so were you.”

His sobs were hot against her neck. Hot and wet and everything she had promised herself she would never play a part in. Lexa would never be her mother, and the smell of spirits clung to her clothes, it was early morning and her brother was sobbing. Disgust at herself curled in her lungs, stopped her breathing in properly.

She wanted to tell him sorry, to fix it, but instead she held him to her front and rocked, the way he liked when he was small, the way her mother had shown her to do it before she went away from a few nights when Aden couldn´t even walk.

Sniffling into her shirt, Aden pulled his head back, his face wrinkled. “You smell.”

Lexa nodded. “Sorry.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but snapped it shut when he whipped his head around, staring out the window. It took Lexa longer, but her drunk brain registered the blue and red light washing the room, washing Aden´s face in a ghostly image of fear.

“Not again.” He whispered, his words settling deep in Lexa´s chest.

 

* * *

 

On Monday morning, Clarke was finally hangover free. Sunday had been spent with her friends and Finn by the pool, avoiding their questions of where she had been for hours the night before. Instead, she´d lain in the sun and ran her tongue over her lips, as if it could evoke the same sensation Lexa had caused the night before.

It hadn´t.

She walked the school corridors with the memory of lips and tongue and teeth, of bruising kisses and fingers that caressed her skin languidly, delighting in every tremor and ripple. Clarke hadn´t known it could feel like that.

Her eyes swept the rooms, the cafeteria, the soccer pitches. She walked with one intent, in the hopes she would bump into Lexa and be able to lean into her, to look up at her from under her lashes and hope, just hope, she wasn´t freaked out by the other night but as utterly delighted as Clarke.

If she regretted it, Clarke would swallow it down and smile. She would smile and then spend the next year convincing Lexa to do that again and again and again if she had to. Never mind the boyfriend Clarke had.

On Wednesday, Clarke still hadn´t found her.

Over lukewarm food and souring milk, Clarke tried to ask casually, “Have you guys seen Lexa?”

“The chick from the party?”

At her nod, Raven laughed. “That girl was fun-would never have known, I don´t remember her speaking much when she was in our year.” She shrugged. “Haven´t seen her though. Ask her to the next party, yeah?”

No one else had seen her, either, and Clarke ignored the look on Octavia´s face as she watched Clarke scan the room again.

By Friday, there was still no Lexa and Clarke was beginning to think she´d imagined the entire thing.

 


	2. Erosion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, thanks for the beautiful feedback. I´m glad people are enjoying this story. Feedback is always so appreciated.

 

_Everything was washed in blue and red, the lights flashing over and over and Lexa´s heart was thudding in her chest, pounding at a beat so fast she thought she was going to be sick. In her arms, Aden was shaking, his eyes were wide and still hadn´t left the window. There was a moment, then, where everything shrank to a kind of clarity, a focal point, and Lexa bit her lip, looking from out the window and back to Aden, the broken look on his face shattering her insides._

_“No.” He said, his voice scraping out, rasping, grating over Lexa´s cheek. His eyes screwed shut and he shook his head again and again and again. “No. No. Lexa. No. Not again.  I can´t go back.”_

_There was something in Lexa´s throat, expanding, a lump that grew bigger and bigger and she couldn´t swallow past it, only hope that the evidence of it didn´t leak out of her eyes. The sound of a door slamming shut, followed by another, echoed in her ears and anxiety flared deep in her gut, so far down, clawing up and trying to fight at the rest of her. How were they here again?_

_“I can´t I can´t I can´t I can´t.”_

_The voice was a whisper in her ear but Aden may as well have been screaming it. They´re chests expanded in time, too fast, rapid, oxygen saturating their blood and too much carbon dioxide expelling as they drew shallow, panicked breaths and Lexa tried desperately to grab onto a solid thought._

_“Aden.”_

_She didn´t recognise her own voice, the desperation, the plea. “Aden, look at me.”_

_Her hands clasped his burning cheeks, his hair curling at the edges of her fingers. He shook his head in her grasp and she clung to him, her voice low. “Aden, please.”_

_Dragging in air, he forced his eyes open and the look in his eyes cracked her down the middle._

_“Aden, listen to me carefully. Take a breath in, slowly.” He did as she said, and that was all she could allow him in that moment. Knocks pounded at the door, pounded alongside the flurry in her chest and Aden´s breathing sped up again. “I need you to go, to your room.”_

_He nodded, once, desperately, and she pushed him onto shaky legs towards his room. There was pounding at the door again, and Lexa waited until she heard the snick of Aden´s door before pulling open the one in front of her._

_The lights were brighter with the door open and Lexa closed her eyes for a moment, squinting when she finally opened them again. A man and a woman stood in front of her, both with grim expressions that did nothing to ease the tightness in Lexa´s chest, their badges flashing along with the lights._

_“Alexandra Stirling?”_

_She nodded, just once, gripping the door. She waited, like last time, to be told her mother was arrested again. Once for drugs, once for assault under the influence of drugs. Apparently she´d tried to rob a store. What had happened this time?_

_“We´re really very sorry to tell you this, but there´s been an accident.”_

_The rest of their words filtered out, were nothing. Their mouths moved and Lexa watched them silently, sound buzzing in her ears and getting louder and louder._

_Her mother was dead, and that meant foster care would be permanent this time._

 

* * *

 

Floating through the weekend was easy, something comfortable. The last week of school faded into the recesses of Clarke´s mind and she tried to forget the touch of Lexa´s fingertips against her cheeks and the bite of her teeth on her lips. There were moments of contented boredom, of stretching out by the pool to soak up the last remnants of warm weather, her friends laughing around her. When Finn rubbed cream on her back, his fingers smoothing over muscles, Clarke tried to not remember other hands on that spot the weekend before and smiled up at him, the sun glinting behind his head and casting him in shadow. She imagined him flattening her pieces back together, running her parts over each other until she fit back together seamlessly. That night she flopped over the modular lounge in her basement in a pile with her friends and laughed, the feeling burbling in her chest, when Raven said they were like a pile of puppies. Legs pressed over her own, a chest under her ear as she watched a film flicker over the screen, a heartbeat thrumming under her ear, keeping time of an easing adolescence. The sound could have belonged to any of her people, it really didn´t matter which one. When her dad brought more popcorn down the stairs, the smell of butter and salt settling over them, he shook his head at them all and winked at her, the sight stitching itself across her ribs.

When Finn kissed a grain off her lip and tucked her hair behind her ear, she sighed into it with a smile and tried to stitch that sight onto herself, as well.

 

* * *

 

Group homes were full of strange sounds, of bumping footsteps and the clearing of foreign throats. Of kids with darkness looped into their eyes and track marks along their skin. Of forgotten kids, of wanted kids, of kids who craved running and kids who wanted to stay and kids who wandered around, with lost, vacant eyes.

Aden´s eyes were full of ghosts, of flashing blue and red and of a look of slight betrayal. In her bed that night, with the terror of knowing that after a week she had to go back to school, Lexa stared at the ceiling and stuffed her hand in her mouth, biting down on it so she could stifle the sob that burnt at her lungs, pushed at the inside of her ribs and made her shudder. A stain stretched over her head and she traced it with her eyes, over and over again in a pattern that became repetitive enough to feel like she could breathe. Her eyes seared with exhaustion, the feeling creeping along her bones to settle in her marrow and threaten to consume her. She was tired of talking to a therapist who could never get it, of sitting with Aden and trying to get him to talk to her.  All he asked though, was where after this, what after this? The knowledge sat in his eyes of the last two times before this, one that he barely remembered, remembering homes that they could be sent to together or alone. He clung to her like he hadn´t in years, his fingers clawing at her shirts, at her hands, his body pressed against her sides. In his therapy sessions, since he wouldn´t talk, only grit his teeth and stare, Lexa talked at his therapist, talked and talked and tried to convince her that unlike the last time, they needed to be together, to go to a placement together, at least, Aden nodding in time to her words beside her.

No one told them anything, though. There were so many rules, rules to use the TV, to eat, to shower, to see each other, to leave. The girls and boys sides were separated, and three times Aden had snuck out the last week to slip into her room and curl along her length, his fingers burning holes into her arms as he cried for a mother Lexa had always tried to shield him from the truth of. After the third night of being physically dragged out of her bed, they left someone in his hallway permanently to keep him out, or in, whatever way you looked at it, and the days after that the bruises under his eyes grew darker and he pushed his food around his plate, asking her to go home.

Sixteen was too young to take guardianship and Lexa wanted to rage at them, to tear down their stupid rules and scream that she´d been doing it since she was eight, why was she suddenly too young years later?

Mostly, she burnt from the inside, the anger bubbling under her skin at her mother, at herself, at adults that played God as she stared upwards, sleepless, teeth grinding, with no idea what to do.

 

* * *

 

On Monday, Lexa came back to school cloaked in rumours and with something glinting in her eyes Clarke didn´t think had been there before. The gossip reached her first, words about ´drunk driving´, ´syringes´, ´dead on arrival´, ´pile up´, ´cause of death´ flowing through the school corridors, unstoppable as they always were. Other words rose up, of foster care, of group homes, and Clarke wanted to cover her ears and tell them all to go to hell. Lexa´s life was not a story, was not something amusing to exchange between toilet stalls and wonder at the truth of it all.

Their table at lunch didn´t buzz with the news, though, and Clarke settled into the comfort of her friends, unable to find Lexa beyond a glimpse in the corridor. The only thing mentioned was a “Hope she´s okay” from Wells, and Raven gave a one shouldered shrug, leaning on the table on one elbow, chine in her hand and straddling her seat, “Sometimes, the system works out okay.”

And they all hushed, and remembered that of all of them, she would know. There was something in her eye, though, that made Clarke want to press for more, but also to turn away and not push for things she didn´t really want to know. Instead, she did neither and threw Raven her pudding cup, earning a wink from her and a sigh from Finn, who had been eyeing it off.

That afternoon Clarke slipped out of Art under the pretence of finding supplies and watched the PE class troop inside the locker rooms. One figure walked behind, taking her time, and Clarke watched her walk behind the bleachers when the teacher wasn´t looking. Taking a breath, no knowing why she was going, Clarke followed, ducking behind and stopping dead. Crouched on the ground, face buried in her hand, Lexa looked small and defeated, looked lost, looked nothing like the girl Clarke had found sitting under the stars with a smile on her lips and a bottle of whiskey in her lap.

Clarke hovered, torn between leaving her be and walking forward.

She decided on neither.

“Lexa.”

Her head shot up and instead of cheeks covered in tears Clarke just saw red rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks, a hard pressed jaw and lips that pressed in a tight line.

“Clarke.” The word was hoarse, was a clack of consonants and vowels and Clarke thought she could listen to her name being said like that forever.

Lexa stood and Clarke leant against the wall behind her, brick rough under her palm. The green of Lexa´s eyes were a storm of things Clarke had no name for, as much as she pushed at her mind to find the words.

“Are you okay?”

The question was a terrible one, cliché and unhelpful, useless and nothing that Lexa could need. Instead of the scoff Clarke expected at them, or the anger, or the eye roll, Lexa swallowed so heavily Clarke could see it, Lexa´s lip quivered just slightly as her eyes looked up, as if willing herself to stay in one piece, to not fall in parts on the floor, shattered and scattered and unable to be put back together. She shook her head, her eyes falling back to Clarke, greener and magnified at the tears that swam in them.

“No. I´m not.”

And then Lexa surged forward, pushing Clarke against the brick where it scraped at her back, a groan ripping out of her throat. Hands threaded in her hair and lips pressed to her own, kissing her like Lexa wanted to coax something from Clarke that she didn´t have to give. But she tried. Clarke pressed back against her, their bodies flush, and let Lexa turn her inside out, let her fingers flay her open, expose her insides and leave her with nothing left to hide. Nails dug into her scalp and Clarke tugged her closer, material fisted in Lexa´s shirt in a desperate attempt to keep her from leaving. The kiss tasted of salt, of desperation, of what sadness would taste like, of loss and grief and hurt and Clarke wanted to tear that feeling from Lexa, even if just for a minute, so she could be free of it.

When it ended, it felt like they shredded apart, as if Lexa had to rent herself in two to detach, turning on her heel to go back to the locker rooms, leaving Clarke gasping for breath and watching her walk away.

 

* * *

The group home was no different after a day at school walking the eclipse of her life, but Lexa moved about with the shadow of Clarke on her lips and it made her feel like something was under her control. Aden wouldn´t speak about his days, his jaw set and eyes hard, even as his fingers dug into her shirt and he sat next to her on one of the sofas, staring at the screen without a sign of emotion on his face. Through the fog of her own uncertainty, Lexa tried to coax him out of it, to poke his side and draw out _something_ but her heart wasn´t in it and she gave up quickly, asking him if he wanted to play his DS.

“Someone stole my games.”

His eyes didn´t leave the TV and Lexa just put her arm around his shoulder and tugged him against her, his rigid body softening slightly.

They stayed there until someone called them, their therapist leading them to one of the small meeting rooms, all hard plastic chairs and hard plastic atmosphere. They settled amongst it and she looked at them with a smile that was as plastic as what Lexa sat on.

“I have some news.”

Later, Lexa would be grateful she didn´t use words like _great_ or _exciting_ or even _good_.

“We have a foster home, available from tomorrow.”

Lexa twitched and felt Aden do the same next to her.

The group home was bad, but a foster home could be worse. Her last had not been a pleasure and Aden had refused to speak of his, and their first, placed together, was one Lexa was glad Aden had barely been old enough to remember. The memories of that place had lain thick over her skull, the early relief that adults had appeared to look after them gone and instead, relief filled her when they sent them back with their mother, proven reformed to the courts who fell fast back into old habits, but at least left them in peace.

Lexa just stared at the woman and waited.

“Unfortunately, it´s only for Aden.” Something caught in her stomach, something caught and held and didn´t let go. “Lexa, at your age, as you know, placement is hard. We´re trying to get you a place in a smaller home for girls, on the other side of the city.”

It must have taken a moment for the words to hit Aden, because as Lexa closed her eyes, her lids squeezed shut, her hands clenching in her lap, she heard his seat scrape loudly on the floor as he stood quickly a beat after the therapist stopped speaking. The chair clattered backwards as he shoved it aside to walk out, the door slamming loudly behind him.


	3. Guilt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to those commenting, feedback is so motivating :)

All night, Lexa lay awake, her leg bouncing nervously and biting her fingers until they bled. There were supposed to be means in place to ensure siblings saw each other, but she knew from last time how quickly that could fall apart, if anyone actually made it happen. At least in the first house, they´d been together. The last one, which had lasted almost a year, had left a trail of scars through Lexa´s mind she didn´t think would ever fade. Each time she had managed to see Aden, he´d withdrawn a little more and a little more inside himself until, when they were finally back together at home, he had been like a shell. One it had taken Lexa months and months to crack it open to coax him back out. The last few months, only then, had he started to be like the brother she knew and now she was going to lose him again.

But permanently, now. Her mother, God, her mother—Lexa jammed her hand in her mouth again, the scrapes from her teeth the last week cracking open as she bit down to stifle that sob that threatened to crack her ribs open, to crack _Lexa_ open, at the thought of her god damn, fucking mother—was dead and there´d be no semblance of a home to go back to and try to make as normal as possible for Aden. Keeping Aden settled kept Lexa sane and she´d be in a group home on the other side of the city, a new school, too far to help him. Who knew where he´d be, what his placement be like, an unknown that loomed so big it shadowed Lexa´s eyes with its ferocity. The lump that had taken permanent residence in her throat grew at the thought that he would most likely end up shipped from house to house...she´d seen some of those kids, where they ended up.

Maybe if she could keep him together, and herself, for two years, she could take guardianship. But then she´d need a job. How could she prove she was able to?

When someone knocked on the door to rouse the six in her dorm, Lexa was still staring upwards, eyes red and an edge of an idea in her mind.

She wasn´t doing this again.

 

* * *

 

Maybe the day after Lexa had kissed Clarke and torn her apart, leaving her behind to pull all her pieces back together, Clarke went to school and had left a trail of clothes scattered around her room, thrown on and thrown off again in an attempt to find an outfit that would make Lexa want to tear her into little pieces again with the grasping of her fingers and the slip of her tongue against Clarke´s own.

Maybe.

Finn accused her, rightly so, of being distracted as her eyes scoured the cafeteria at lunch, flitting from person to person but never settling. Afterwards she tried to keep her attention on the people surrounding her, the sounds of their voices as they rose and fell in patterns that she normally melded her own to easily.

Clarke laughed at something someone said, only slightly forced, and felt Finn´s shoulders relax next to her, tension seeping from his body. But Octavia just watched her, her head slightly cocked as Clarke´s eyes went back to watch the students who floated in and out.

In the bathroom, she cornered Clarke, a hand on her hip and eyes lit with curiosity.

“Were you watching for Lexa again?”

“What?” Clarke heard her own voice, heard the high lilt in the vowels but couldn´t stop it. “No. No, I´m just…distracted today. Big test in chem.”

One she´d fail, because instead of studying Clarke had drawn the same eyes over and over again in her notebook all night, her own burning as sleep evaded her and the look she was trying to capture did as well.

But Octavia wouldn´t let it go. “Don´t lie to me, Griffin, I´ve known you since you thought it was funny to pee in the sandbox.”

The only thing Clarke could do at that was roll her eyes and offer a weak, “That was one time, and Bellamy said I wouldn´t be able to.”

“Right, and you have to take every challenge.”

Clarke smirked. “Only when I know I can win it. Otherwise, I disappear to win it another day in another way.”

That made Octavia snort and some of the tension that had slid in between them dissipated, filtered away in shared, knowing smiles.

“So, why can´t you keep your eyes off Lexa?”

Clarke sighed and decided on a half truth. “I don´t know, we´ve been getting to know each other. And if those rumours are true….”

“You´re worried about her?”

Clarke shrugged helplessly, not sure how to put whatever the feeling that was curling in her chest into words. “She´s not here again today. Yesterday, it seemed like she was back.”

Back and wreaking havoc on Clarke´s mind.

“Just add her on her on Facebook like the rest of the world when they´re trying to get in touch with someone.” Octavia had leant forward to the mirror, fingers at her hair, and missed the flush Clarke could feel heating her cheeks.

“She´s not on it.”

Octavia froze. “What kind of sixteen year old isn´t on Facebook?”

“Exactly.”

Straightening, Octavia pulled her phone out of her pocket. “Twitter? Tumblr? The schools forum? Wattsapp?”

“Not that I could find.”

So maybe Clarke hadn´t _only_ been drawing last night.

Jamming the phone back in her pocket, Octavia pursed her lips for a minute, a sure sign she was thinking as quickly as she could. “Well, we need to get someone on this who knows more than we do.”

“Monty?”

“Monty. And maybe Raven.”

Clarke grinned.

 

* * *

 

The bundle of bills Lexa had taken from the social workers bag that morning felt like lead in her pocket. Her fingers had slid in easily, muscle memory plucking them out and into her own pocket in a split second and she ignored the flare of guilt, the quickening of her heart. It took no time at all to shove the things she´d managed to pack that blurry night into an oversized backpack, ratty and worn and matching her heart. There wasn´t a lot, as mostly she wanted anything warm, a well-thumbed book she didn´t let herself look at and toiletries, some extras. Teeth worrying her lip, she slipped in a text book, weighty and unnecessary.

On the bus that took them to school she pressed close to Aden, who grudgingly allowed it outside of their bubble of space. He hadn´t spoken since last night, hadn´t said a word to her, no matter how much she tried to promise him it would be fine, they´d see each other all the time, the lies bitter on her tongue and leaving an acrid taste in their wake. When he got off first, he stormed down the aisle and Lexa let him be angry, let him walk away and leant against the window, the vibrations giving her a headache.

At her own school, she got off the bus, waited for it turn away and just walked down the street, her hood pulled over her head and hands buried in her pockets, fingers plucking at the money that felt like it was burning her.

She wandered, all day, ending up in a park and pulling out her text book, her favourite. With a breeze playing at her hair, she devoured it, and tired not to think of Clarke, of how she had felt pressed between Lexa´s body and the wall. At the clinging of her fingers, the way she pulled Lexa closer and closer, taking the desperation Lexa needed _someone_ to absorb. And Clarke definitely did that. She tried not to think of all that, to think of the text in front of her, and beyond all of that tried not to think about Aden, about her mother, about what was to come.

She ended up near Aden´s school, waiting until the bell rang to seek him out. He barely showed surprise when she tugged on his arm and drew him around a corner into the shelter of some trees. Cool shade ran over her skin and spots of light through the leaves danced over Aden´s cheeks.

"Aden..."

"You´re leaving?"

He knew her too well. "Not the city, I´ll...I´ll be here, when you need me."

There was a slight quiver to his lip Lexa thought she may have imagined, because it disappeared as quickly as it showed. "No."

"Aden..."

How did she explain that she had to? She couldn´t be where she had been before, just couldn´t.

"No! Last time I barely saw you. They—they kept us apart."

Lexa fell to a knee in front of him, the cool grass seeping through her jeans. "When I left last time, I saw you more...I could stop by the school, like I am right now."

He stared at her, his eyes narrowing, his voice baby soft. "But this time we can´t end up at home."

"I know...I´m going to fix it, Aden. I am going to make sure I can be with you when I turn eighteen."

He shook his head. "No. I´m coming."

Somehow, she´d expected that, yet the words still hit her like a slap. "You can´t. You have school, you need...a house."

The argument felt weak, but it was truth Lexa couldn´t deny.

"And you don´t?"

Lexa blinked at him, blinked because she had no retort to that. "You-you know I can handle myself."

She gave a half-hearted wink that he didn´t even acknowledge. With a fluid motion, he pulled his back pack to his front, unzipping it to show it stuffed with clothes, a toothbrush poking out and his DS crammed on top.

Panic crawled along her skin.

“You were going to run, Aden? No.” Her fingers dug into his bicep, too hard, too frantic, but he didn´t flinch and Lexa felt horror crawl at her throat at the idea of him alone on the streets. They were going to collect him from school that afternoon, and he hadn´t planned to be there. Lexa couldn´t even be mad—she´d done it before, and she had been about to do it again. She was the worst of all influences. “Aden, no. You can never run away, you´d be alone, the streets aren´t something _fun_.”

He stared her straight in the eye, her little brother who was growing too tall too quickly, his face thinning and losing his baby fat, the glint in his eyes something most adults didn´t have. “I wasn´t going to go alone. I knew you´d run, too.”

For a second, the need for a reprieve breaking her, Lexa dropped her head, her fingers still clinging to his bony arms. Too thin, he´d always been too thin. He needed school, he needed food, he needed a roof, he´d only just turned eight.

They´d celebrated with a piece of brownie, dry and crumbling and foul, that Lexa had brought home from the cafeteria. He´d grinned at her, his thank you so genuine that Lexa had had to turn away.

With a breath to inflate her, to build her up, to give her the strength to walk away, Lexa looked up. “You can´t come Aden. Once they stop watching you to find me, I´ll try and stop by the school to see you, like last time.”

His jaw clenched. “They might make me move school.”

“I´ll find you.”

“How?” He shouted the word at her, his eyes red and brimming yet nothing on his cheeks but a blazing anger.

“I just will, Aden! I always do.”

“Lexa.” His voice was rough, hoarse, strained and she hated what the world was doing to him. “You can´t leave me.”

“I´m sorry.”

And she tried to wrap her arms around him but he pushed her off, his hands planted on her chest and shoving backwards, tears streaking his cheeks now and his jaw clamped tight.

She watched him a moment, his heaving chest as he dragged in air and then she pressed her lips together, shook her head.

“I´ll see you soon, Kiddo.”

And she turned to leave, his broken, “Lexa” hitting her square between the shoulder blades.

She only made it two steps.

With a stone in her chest that weighed too heavily to breathe, Lexa turned, feet thudding the grass with her steps and took his outstretched hand. Their fingers laced together, tight, as they walked step by step away from the school, away from any sense, the thought pounding in Lexa´s mind that maybe that had been what she was always going to do.

She was too selfish not to.

She could tell herself it was because she´d worry he´d run alone. Hell, it wasn´t even a worry, she _knew_ he would. She could tell herself it was all for _him_.

But she´d be lying.


	4. Slipping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for the feedback. I really love reading what you guys think about this little story.

It was easy, for one night, to pretend they could do it alone. To wrap themselves in the sleeping bag Lexa had shoved at the bottom of her backpack and wrap themselves in the night in turn, two kids who had faded into the nothingness of the street. It was easy, for one night, to wrap an arm around her brother and wrap him in words that shielded him from the truth of it all. It was easy, to pull him tighter and wrap him in her arms.

It should have been easy, for one night, to block out the thumping of her heart that left her breathless, pumping in time to _what did I do what did I do what the fuck did I fucking do_.

That was something that wasn´t so easy.

Aden, his blonde hair soft against her neck, pressed into her side, moulded against her like so many nights before and she didn´t need to look at him to know his dark, wide eyes were staring around them. He smelt like the cheap shampoo in the group centre, like a little kid who had spent his entire day at school, like home.

He smelt like home and everything Lexa had missed last time, and now she had him here with her and all she had for it was guilt tripping at her stomach and panic clambering its way up her spine.

He was so young.

“It´s pretty here.”

The urge to laugh at the ridiculous statement was almost overwhelming, but if she blocked out the dripping behind her and the smell, it almost could be called pretty. Under the bridge, the water in front of them was a deep pool of black and if she tilted her head slightly, the lights of the city reflected all along it, white and orange and blue, rippling slightly and making it seem like reality was playing tricks as it skimmed along the surface.

So all Lexa did was hum, letting Aden think she agreed.

“Is this where you were when you ran away last time?”

Lexa sighed, burrowing further into the sleeping bag, the dripping behind her in time to the beat of her heart, a drum to keep time to the still repeated thought of _what did I do what did I do?_

“Some of it.”

“I´m glad I´m with you, this time.”

Lexa tugged him further under her arm and said nothing, wondering what the hell she´d dragged her little brother into. He would have ran on his own. Lexa had seen it: it had been clear in the stubborn glint in his eye, the set of his jaw, the jut of his chin: a look that she knew he had learnt from her. A look that told her he meant it. And what then? Her brother alone on the street, wandering and hoping to run into Lexa by chance? He was five years younger than Lexa was when she had done it, and she had been far too young for it then. The old generation, the vets, the discarded, that had laid out in cardboard boxes and tinkled like glass knocking against glass when they moved, their hair white and skin crinkled like fruit left in the sun had been too young for it.

No one was old enough to qualify for this life.

But her brother was far _too_ young. He had already seen too much, experienced hunger rumbling in his belly, sat in darkness and shivered because a bill had gone unpaid, felt abandonment sink deep into his bones to lay a map throughout his insides—Lexa could not have stomached seeing what the streets would do to him, if he ran alone.

But what if the foster home had been a good one? One filled with food and meals that arrived at the same time, with a woman who liked to a hug and in which safety floated over your shoulders, cast like a net that should have been there forever.

Maybe Aden would have given that a chance.

But now she would never know, and neither would he, and they lay under a bridge Lexa knew wasn´t frequented this time of year: too loud, with the trucks reverberating overhead, the lap of the water. Too cold, the breeze carrying a bite, the water carrying a fog that could sink into your skin and leave you trembling.

But not with the sleeping bag, made for minus temperatures, stolen her last time she´d slept outside, independence burning in her chest and idiocy coursing through her blood. Not with a brother who could sleep through a bomb, not with the need to keep him from some of the things she´d seen in the squats she´d been in.

Against her chest, Aden´s breathing evened out, his fingers loosening where they clutched her hoodie. Lexa swallowed and watched the lights play over the surface of the water and tried to keep her mind blank, to not think about what she was going to do.

But really, that was what had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

She´d done what she had wanted to do, followed the urge that had been building for years: to run, to hop a bus, a plane, to disappear.

But she´d stalled in her take off, the hand of her eight year old brother in hers, and realised she would never have done any of that without him anyway.

His breath over her skin was like it was when he was a baby: even and steady and hers. The moon was full, gaping wide and Lexa felt like she could fall through it, like they could tumble through and move among the stars, stepping from constellation to solar flare, forbidden to mere mortals but not to them.

Instead, she was here, and Lexa had no idea what she was meant to do now.

 

* * *

 

“So she has no Facebook?”

Monty stared at Clarke, his collection of monitors behind him blinking and glowing like they held all the answers to everything. Clarke shook her head.

“No Twitter? No Tumblr? No…no social media?”

She shook her head again, buried in a bean bag with a bowl of popcorn on her stomach. Between her legs, sitting on the floor, Octavia stretched out like youth personified.

“None that I could find her on.”

Monty tapped a pen against his lip, a pattern of thought like morse code, a codex to his thoughts, trapping a genius Clarke was lost to. Leaning back in his office chair, he threw his pen behind himself and then put his over-sized drink to his lips, sucking at the straw and eyeing her.

“That´s kind of weird.”

Clarke nodded. “It is.”

“What sixteen year old doesn´t have Facebook?”

Clarke shrugged, and tried not to answer that apparently the kind who kissed like they were on fire, like all they needed was Clarke to keep from extinguishing themselves, whose nails gripped at her skin, they were the type that didn´t have Facebook.

“C´mon, Monty.” Octavia threw her hands in the air. “Can you help us?”

A look not unlike insult screwed up Monty´s face. “Of course I can. You´re talking childs play.”

From the bed in the corner, Jasper finally spoke up. “What he wants to say, is what´s in it for us?”

“Don´t you mean for him?” Clarke asked, eyebrows raised.

Jasper flashed her a grin, settling his goggles over his eyes, but not before Clarke noticed how red they were. He was glossy, far away, his voice dreamy and laced with hash. “No, I mean for us. I´m the brains of this operation.”

He flopped back on the bed and Clarke looked back to Monty, who was rolling his eyes. Clarke needed to know. “I´ll buy the next piece of equipment you´re after.”

The hole that would make in her savings account would be huge, a hole too big to cover up from her parent´s prying eyes. But Lexa had lit a wanting in Clarke, a needing, had lit curiosity and then left her behind with nothing to sate it.

Monty´s eyes lit up and he swivelled his chair, two of the monitors flashing to a wide screen, code typing too fast for Clarke to follow on another. She could see now, in the determined set of his face, in the blinking monitors, how it was Monty had received a visit from the FBI a year ago for delving too deep, for having a talent to find out things he shouldn´t.

“What did those suits say to you after they took you away in a van from school, Monty?” Interest lilted Octavia´s words. When he´d come back a few days later, slightly pale, he hadn´t said a word and they´d realised to leave him alone.

Back to them, Monty just shrugged. “They said a lot of things.”

Octavia sighed. “Enough to make you stop?”

He turned then, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Enough to make me learn how not to be caught.”

Then he said something about IP´s, and bouncing, and lines and Clarke was lost.

“So, her full name?” He tossed the question over his shoulder.

“Alexandra Stirling.”

Maybe she said it too fast, too easily, the syllables falling from Clarke´s tongue as if they weren´t something foreign, because Octavia tilted her head where it was pressed against Clarke´s thigh, a look in her eyes Clarke didn´t want to try to understand.

Monty´s shoulders were hunched, keys clacking rapidly. “Date of birth?”

“No idea.”

“She´s a year below us, you said?”

“Yeah, but our age.”

“That makes it easier.”

For a little while, the monitors blurred from Clarke´s position near the floor and her fingers ran through Octavia´s hair, a habit from when they were small. Jasper lit a blunt from the bed and offered it over, Clarke shaking her head and Octavia sitting up to take an eager drag, a cough and a loopy smile her gift of thanks. For a little while, Clarke lolled in an easy Tuesday afternoon, her bag dropped on the floor behind them, the hours of study she had to do stretched out in the night ahead. With glazed eyes and a hum in her chest, Octavia fell back against the bean bag, her hand poking at Clarke´s thigh with a giggle spilling from her lips.

“You´re vibrating.” A smile split her lips. “That your phone in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

High Octavia had always been an unstoppable flirt. Clarke rolled her eyes and when she saw her phone lighting up with Finn´s name, she swiped it off and slipped it back in her pocket. Eyes now closed, head a brick against Clarke´s knee, Octavia made a ´tsk´ noise and Clarke ignored her, teeth worrying her lip.

“Got something.” Monty gave a low whistle. “And it definitely isn´t a Facebook account.”

Clarke had thought they´d find a fake name, a changed surname, some link to find a mobile number, a social media account, some way to send an awkward _hey, wanna make out some more?_ message. The cloak and dagger had been excessive, something that felt like a game, something she slipped on for the afternoon to find her damsel. Instead, Monty laid out a path of foster homes, of a runaway three years ago, of brushes with police. The confirmed death of her mother, the collection back into foster care, a group home. Swallowing past the pricking in her throat, Clarke wondered at the life that Lexa led.

Records showed she had a home for girls laid out for her, in another school district.

She wondered if she´d ever see Lexa again, disappointment acrid on her tongue at the thought that it really didn´t seem that way.

 

* * *

 

Lexa woke with a start, with a jolt, adrenaline surging through her so fast that the ache in her neck was almost unnoticeable. Everything was blurry and she rubbed at her eyes, blinking away the last of her dreams that tugged at her. Something about the taste of whisky, the splash of a tennis table ball, the lick of a tongue at her bottom lip.

The sky was streaked with pink, the water no longer a black pit hiding secrets, but a reflection of sunrise, of a new day, of something that should encourage anticipation but left Lexa tasting ash.

She had wanted to get herself a life, find a job, set herself up so at eighteen, she could get her brother back. The chances of that had been low to begin with, and now she had Aden with her, sound asleep with a backpack for a pillow, and Lexa had no idea what to do. The air was bitingly cold and she tugged her hood over her head to cover her ears, pulled the sleeping bag higher up Aden and bit her lip.

She had no idea what to do.

“What are you thinking?”

The voice was gravelly, full of sleep, and Lexa looked down to see Aden watching her, his breath puffing out in front of him, cheeks pale.

“What we´re going to do.”

There must have been something in her voice, something that gave her away because his eyes widened and his voice pushed against the gravel in his voice.

“Don´t give me back.”

Lexa swallowed past that damn swollen feeling in her throat and reached out, her hand settling over his forehead, smoothing his hair back in a habit as old as Aden was.

“What about food, Aden?”

“We can find food.”

Lexa laughed, just a puff of air through her nose, at his cadence, at the naivety.

“We can.” His voice was still squashed with sleep, and Lexa wished he could stay that way forever, that trusting and sure in her, that safe in the security of a night with her, with food in his stomach, with warmth. “You did last time.”

Lexa pressed her lips together and looked away, eyes watching the city come alive from a point the city couldn´t see her. How could she explain that that had been easier, last time, without an eight year old in her care, without worrying about him, about preserving his innocence? How did she explain that so often, she went hungry, because at thirteen she´d looked so young, shelters would call authorities, soup kitchens would edge towards their phones, try to keep her talking, keep her near, to make a call they thought would be helping her.

How fast they´d do that if she went now with someone as small as Aden clutching her side.

“I did.” There was something she could do, there was something there, but Lexa had no idea if it was an option anymore. “What about school?”

Even curled up in his sleeping bag, sleep still hanging off him like dew, he managed to shrug. “What about it?”

Lexa did laugh this time, softly, the sound grating at her ears but the feeling in her chest easing just slightly. “Said the eight year old.”

He eyed her. “What´s that supposed to mean?”

“You need school.”

“Do not.”

Lexa sighed and lay back down, Aden wriggling to press to her side, warm and breathing and with her.

“Do too.” She said.

“Nuh-huh.” His voice was muffled, pressed against her shoulder, and Lexa stared up at the grey cement overhead, covered in graffiti. The patterns swirled, nonsensical and her eyes closed, the colours and swirls imprinted on her eyelids, the feeling creeping up her throat that that was meant to be her life, flowing out in front of her, leading nowhere and wrapping in on itself again and again, colliding with the past so she never really went forward, or anywhere at all.

They spent the day walking streets Lexa hadn´t been to in years, safe in the knowledge that the city was huge, that there were thousands of kids like themselves and not enough people to find them all. There was something humbling about anonymity, about knowing how easy it was to slip through the cracks, especially when that was where she wanted to go. With a credit card taken from the same place as the money the morning before, Lexa bought two tickets by bus to New York, gave all their details, their names tapped into the computer. Without a backwards glance, she dropped them into the bin outside the station, snapped the card in two and dropped it in after them.

Aden stared at her, puzzled, and she gave him a wink. “The card would have been reported stolen.”

 “So?”

Sometimes, it was easy to forget how young he was, how much in life even Aden didn´t know yet.

“They would know it was me that took it, and the transaction here will be flagged.”

“Flagged?”

They walked down the street, and Aden´s backpack bounced with his steps, the sun hitting his head like it was all it would want to touch.

“Like, noticed.”

“I thought that would be bad?”

“Well, if we were actually going to New York, it would be a clue to them, and it would be bad. But that bus leaves in twenty minutes, and they won´t notice we´re not on it, that shouldn´t get logged electronically.”

Aden chewed his lip for a second, his eyebrows pressed together. “So they won´t know where we are?” A grin was starting on his lips and the pull of it made Lexa want to cry.

Instead, she nodded. “Exactly. They´ll see we bought two tickets there, and tell child services. They´ll think we´ve gone there, but really we´ll be here.”

And that crack they were already slipping into would grow wider, a chasm to swallow a street kid whole.

Aden stared up at her. “That´s pretty smart, Lexa.”

Her throat ached at the adoration on his face, the happiness that she was dragging him down with her.

They spent the day in the library, still clean and together enough that it was simple to slip a smile to the librarian and mention a home schooling project. They set up in a corner and Lexa gave Aden a topic, one she knew he could go at for ages—the planets and the sun—and watched him walk amongst the aisles, fingers plucking at books, trailing along spines and carrying back arm loads.

They repeated this for days, the weather cooling around them each morning but Aden never once muttering against it. Every night, Lexa lay awake, staring upwards and begging the sky for a plan, the one that came to her every time one she rejected, stubbornness hardening her jaw as she tried to figure out a way that she could make it work, the two of them.

In the library, Aden read with small movements of his lips, as if he needed to roll the words around his tongue to really get a feel for them. Lexa showed him the glossary, taught him how to find the words he didn´t know and he dragged out a notebook and pen from his back pack, the childish loops to his letters rolling out from his hands and across his pages. His feet didn´t touch the floor, toes just scraping it when he kicked his legs, and the table shook gently with each movement, but not once did she tell him to stop.

Rather, she sat and mulled. Rolled thought after thought in her mind, ideas clashing and bouncing away from each other, picking each apart until it lay in a tangled mess, proven worthless and doing nothing to help her predicament. Her knee bounced and she flicked a pen around and around her fingers until she stood, moving to a computer she could still see Aden from, a colourful book with Saturn spread over its cover propped up in front of him. She searched for shelters that didn´t require your age, that didn´t report to child services.

They were all full. She´d find it out in the evening, when she knocked with Aden standing a step behind her in her shadow.

She searched for soup kitchens, the money in her pocket wasn´t going to get them far, and figured they could at least prove useful.

It had been so much easier alone.

Until it hadn´t been.

She kept circling back, again and again, and after several days of trying to avoid it knew where she´d have to go.

That last day of marinating in bad ideas, a sound at the window drew her attention, and Lexa felt her stomach sink as water splattered over the glass. Fat, heavy drops started to fall and soon, it was pouring outside, the windows fogging and the rain washing the city clean. The computer humming in front of her, she watched Aden flick his eyes outside, watched them grow wide, before he looked back to his book. He kept looking back, then away, until eventually he was staring, pupils reflecting the coming storm. Sliding into a chair opposite him, Lexa tried to smile and cover her panic when his nervous eyes launched to catch her own.

“It´s raining.”

She nodded. “It is.”

He looked around the library and, secrecy already easy for him, lowered his voice even more. “We´ll get wet if we sleep where have been.”

“We will.”

He stared at her and Lexa gave into the only idea not left strewn and exhausted. “But it´s okay. I know somewhere.”

He relaxed into his chair, pulling the book onto his lap, shoulders no longer squared but at ease. “Oh, okay.”

Just like that.

When the library started to close around them, they walked together and slipped the books back where Aden had taken them from, sliding them home. Outside, the cold was almost stinging, Aden´s cheeks flushed in moments from it. He slid a hand into hers, the tips still warm from the haven inside.

“Can we go back there, again?”

He had asked that each day.

Lexa gave a nod. “Of course.”

“Where are we going?”

“You´ll see.”

At least, she hoped he would. It had been two years. They walked for forty minutes, the rain giving up to barely a trickle, and not once did Aden complain or say that he was tired. They stopped half way, the streetlights lit up around them, to pull the bread Lexa had bought the day before out of her bag and smear pieces of it with peanut butter. It was thick in their mouths, more filling than things they´d eaten at home at times, and Lexa felt a sense of satisfaction that at least she´d managed to fill his stomach. When the rain stopped, it almost felt like Lexa herself had willed it.

They walked again, slipping into alleys like a maze, feet treading a path Lexa had never thought she´d be on again, let alone side-by-side with Aden. They came to a fence, the wire pulling out easily like it had before when she tugged at it and they slid through the hole it opened up, Aden not asking a single question. Ducking under another fence, then through a gate, they came to warehouse on the outskirts, a door facing them, covered in peeling green paint.

Aden looked up at her and Lexa gave him a nod, the stars overhead bright in his eyes and the fog from the river starting to creep up the streets around them. Taking a deep breath, she tore her eyes from the galaxy of his and knocked on the wood, twice rapidly, once after a pause, then three more fast, a pattern she played before sleep some nights, a longing for days ages gone in the balled fists of her hands. 

A window slid open, dark eyes staring out at her.

Lexa swallowed, felt Aden´s hand clamp tighter in her own.

“I need your help.”


	5. Quicksand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I´m sorry this one is short, but it felt necessary, and the next will be much longer :) Thank you for reading this little story, for your kudos and thoughts.

The book in front of Clarke´s eyes was blurring, the words swirling together and swarming into nothingness. Her pen tapped rhythmically on the page, a beat she didn´t recognise but wouldn´t leave her mind.

 This paper was due in a few days, a report on a war years ago her country still celebrated with vigour, like battles and death and destruction were worth glorifying rather than planning to avoid at all costs. It was a night for ruminating, for settling in her thoughts like sinking in to quicksand—every time she struggled to leave them, she became further entangled.

Octavia snored behind her, wrapped in the sheets of Clarke´s queen bed like she had been doing since their first year at kindergarten. Dinner had been quiet, Clarke settling in with her mother and father, food hot on her plate and Octavia talking too much to distract them from the mood that had taken over since Monty´s house. Clarke´s family wasn´t rolling in money, not by a long shot—her mother volunteered too much of her time with organisations that sent surgeons away, or to clinics down the road, to help those who had nothing. Her mother accepted nothing but smiles as a thank you, payment enough. Her father was a government employee—but they were comfortable: Clarke had no idea what hunger really meant, had at least one parent with her every night in the house, their concern pressing so much that sometimes Clarke wanted to crawl out of her skin to find some space to breathe.

But she had never _not_ had that. Lexa´s files had spilled out one after the other, an accidental find and one that broke her privacy, left guilt punching in Clarke´s gut. She´d sworn Monty to secrecy and not bothered with Jasper, passed out on the bed. Octavia, Clarke knew, wouldn´t breathe a word.

But Lexa had the government looking out for her now, had a girl´s home she would be in, had school.

She would be fine.

So why wouldn´t the memory of her leave Clarke alone? Why did it feel like Lexa had imprinted herself over Clarke´s skin, invisible to everyone but pulling at everything that was Clarke. Outside, the rain was falling so hard it echoed throughout the house, the splattering over the glass matching the pattern to Clarke´s tapping pen.

The tapping on the glass got louder and when she turned, Finn was at there, soaking wet and waving with an embarrassed smile on his lips. When she slid the window open and leaned on the sill, his dripping face inches from her, she couldn´t help the choked laugh that pulled from her.

“What are you doing?” She kept her voice hushed, low.

He shrugged, his hair falling over his eyes in a way that had always made her heart speed up, but in that moment, simply left a warm feeling of familiarity in the pit of her stomach. Something comforting, slow.

“You weren´t answering my calls.”

With everything she had, she tried to hide her surprise, the shock of realisation that she´d forgotten all about him, even if just for a few hours. The plant near him spilled wet, green leaves and Clarke bit down the memory of Lexa´s eyes, staring at her in an alcohol haze, tucked into a bathroom, or staring at her with something so desperate under dirty bleaches that Clarke had wanted to tear herself open, to spill everything she was, to offer it all to Lexa, just on the small chance that it was what she had wanted.

“Sorry.” Was all she could offer, and he didn´t ask for more, not when they were so new, barely cemented, but she offered him something, anyway. “Dinner with my parents.”

He smiled his understanding and leant forward, kissing her with lips too cold and needy, something altogether different to what she found herself wanting, to what reared up in the back of her, calling for something that was nothing like this.

But she kissed him back and pushed that part back down.

 

* * *

 

Eyes just stared at her through the hole in the door, shrouded in shadow, only the light of the moon to wash over them. Lexa felt naked, felt like a sacrifice, vulnerable and trussed up to stand before her maker, her brother clutching her clammy hand, and waiting to be told if she lived or died.

“One minute.”

Lexa knew that voice. Her stomach dropped.

And the window slid shut with a slam that made Aden jump beside her, the squeeze of his hand bordering on painful but nothing Lexa wouldn´t take for him: she´d take things a thousand times worse than that. With a sidestep, a small shuffle of his feet, he pressed along the side of her, the warmth of him soaking through her clothes. She glanced down to the top of his head, the moonlight washing over the damp, golden strands to make them silver, a colour for Gods, for heroes, not for the mortal she wanted her brother to be: not for the normal.

He deserved so much, and yet he only had her.

He looked up, his eyes no longer reflecting stars overhead but the clouds that were creeping back over the sky, dark and rolling and roiling with rain. A splat of it landed on his cheek and it shone as it rolled down the slope of it. With a swipe of the back of his hand, it was gone.

“Where are we?”

Lexa ran her tongue over her lip, hovered on her answer. “Somewhere with friends, if they´ll have us.”

“Friends you had before?”

Lexa nodded. “Yes.”

He blinked, his head cocking to one side. “I´m glad you had friends, before. I thought you were all alone.”

Lexa´s chest ached, then, with the swelling behind her ribs, the influx of emotion at the thought that before, at five, her brother had worried for her, had not wanted her to be alone.

“I wasn´t. They helped me learn how to survive.”

Skills Lexa had thought she could use alone this time, not wanting to ask for help, not wanting to have to go back. Not sure if they would have her, with how it had ended, with how she had left. Skills she could use, but not enough to survive alone with an eight year old brother.

Lexa felt like sixteen going on eighty. She felt the weight of the world pushing down on her shoulders to crush her bones. She wanted to sink into the feeling, to let it bow her, to give in to age, to let her hands wrinkle and crinkle, to sigh as she turned to ash and floated away. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and squeezed the hand in hers a little harder.

But really, were the skills all that different to what she had already learnt at home, with a mother never there, gone for over a week at times, leaving Lexa alone, and later Lexa alone with a baby brother? She thought, now, that she just took things she already knew and applied them in a different setting.

Find food, feed your own, make sure you were warm enough, make sure people didn´t find out you were alone, hungry, cold, a bit too dirty.

“Why didn´t we come here before?”

Lexa swallowed and looked down again, his big eyes still staring up at her. He smelt damp from the rain, smelling like clothes that were bordering on needing a wash, smelling like he had slept under a bridge last night.

“Because—”

The door swung open, the hinges creaking and echoing out behind them, the sound bouncing of old walls and corrugated iron fences.

Light flooded on, seemingly off before to mask the person who had been at the door in mystery, something that didn´t surprise Lexa in the slightest.

Aden threw his hand up, covering his screwed-up eyes but Lexa made herself squint through the shock of the light.

“Well, well. Look who´s returned.”

It was exactly who Lexa had thought it had been when she´d heard that voice, slightly deeper after two years. Her eyes were layered in dark eyeliner, rips in her jeans and jacket layered over dark vests.

“Hello, Anya.”

The punch hurt, even though it wasn´t entirely unexpected. It hit her on the cheek bone, and was nowhere near as hard as Anya could hit, and that was what Lexa told herself to make herself feel a little better. What hit like a truly meant punch, though, was Aden´s panicked shout and the way his hand tore from hers when she took a shuddering step back to take away some of the impact.

Hand covering the spot flooding with heat on her cheek, where she knew a bruise would blossom, Lexa eyed Anya off.

“I guess I deserved that.”


	6. Etchings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Delicious (I hope) backstory....finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for comments and for the kudos. I´m so glad people are enjoying this. I do promise...Clarke and Lexa time is coming, and soon. It just needs some set up.

“Damn right you deserved it.”

Aden was back at Lexa´s side, his hand holding the back of her shirt and, wanting to claw him back to her but in awe of what he was doing, she just watched as he stepped in front of her and stood side on to Anya, back straight and eyes glinting as he stared herr down. Or, rather, up, considering how small he was.

“Stay away from her.”

His other hand was balled into a white knuckled fist.

Laughing at her brother wasn´t appropriate, especially because he was doing everything he could to stand up for her. The throb in her cheek wasn´t abating, and the smile she was forcing down didn´t help.

Anya didn´t bother to hold it down. She gave a short, harsh bark of laughter. “Or what, kid?”

“You´ll have to go through me.”

Lexa didn´t know where he learnt such a statement but the audacity of it, the sheer determination, tugged at her chest.

Anya didn´t laugh this time, instead her face was solemn, the smile gone, though Lexa was sure it was still playing at the edges a little. She cocked her head, her arms crossed, and stared Aden down. Lexa´s hand rested heavy on his shoulder, the small muscles straining under her palm, his back ramrod straight. Aden didn´t turn from the dark eyes in front of him and Lexa didn´t know if she should be horrified or proud.

Finally, Anya gave a nod. “Fair enough.” Her eyes flicked up to meet Lexa´s, obscure and hiding a wealth of secrets, most Lexa never even came close to yet had come closer than most. “Well, I can see you two are related.”

Lexa finally gave into the urge screaming at her fingers and tugged Aden against her front, her hand planted over his chest. It didn´t dim his protective stance though, his chest puffed out against her palm.

“Little brother?” Anya asked. Lexa nodded. Anya looked down at him again. “It´s nice to finally see you in the flesh, kid.”

Beneath her hand, Aden deflated slightly, confusion pushing his eyebrows together as he looked up at Lexa, the back of his head pressed against her stomach.

“She´s a friend, Aden.”

“She punched you.”

“She did, but I kind of deserved it.”

Anya nodded. “She did.”

It was silent excluding the sound of the rain that had picked up around them drops hitting the pavement under their feet. They splattered against Lexa´s skin one after the other, a pattern to testify that she couldn´t keep her little brother safe alone. Under her hand, Aden shivered, the tremor rising up his spine.

Both Lexa and Aden just pressed together, watching Anya watch them. Finally she gave a small roll of her eyes and stepped back through the door. “Come on, then.”

It took everything she had to smother the sigh of relief, the tension draining from her shoulders as she stepped forward, Aden´s hand sliding into her own. Anya led and they followed, their feet leaving squelching footprints on the cement floor and the door swinging shut behind them, Aden jumping slightly at the jarring sound of it. Lexa squeezed his hand once and he looked back ahead, his eyes watching everything as they walked down a hallway Lexa had stepped down so many times before. They emerged into what used to be factory space, two stories, with battery operated lanterns smattered about, the room lit as if by candle light.

Not much had changed, except over the two years since Lexa had stood here, the space had been cleared even more, newer looking sofas spread out on one side, bookshelves improvised from pallets or fixed up from the street had grown in number, books lining all of them. Taking up most of a corner and wall was an improvised eating space, pallets and mismatched chairs and crates, boxes filled with food. A few gas stoves sat round and a sink let them access water.

It had not taken Lexa long to realise how much people threw out on the street.

Curious eyes followed them where a few teenagers who looked Lexa´s age were sprawled on the couches, none she recognised. Aden stared around, taking in the huge open space, the rooms on one side that led off to what was probably offices before, and the stairs that went upstairs to walkway that ran around the walls that led into other rooms. Ropes hung from the ceiling and Lexa had a strong memory of the burn of it on her hands as she slid down from the cat walk above, muscles in her legs aching as she tried to remember to let her feet take the burn to save her hands.

They didn´t cross the space in front of them, rather taking a left and walking into one of the rooms. A cot was set up in the corner and books were stacked along a wall, magazines next to them. A map of the city was pinned up and sitting at the desk, looking exactly the same, was Indra.

Lexa swallowed and stopped in the doorway, Aden half a step behind her and pressed up against her back, watching it all with his head peering around Lexa´s arm.

The room hadn´t changed, Indra hadn´t changed and Lexa´s heart fluttered in her throat, her palms clammy. The first time she´d stood in that spot welled in her mind, when she had more than a lightly bruising cheek, smaller and feeling fractured inside, missing the exact boy who was now standing behind her.

Their eyes were glued on each other, Lexa´s on Indra and Anya watched, her feet crossed at the ankle, dark eyes flitting from one to the other. Slowly, a smile crept up on Indra´s face, starting in her lips before the white of her teeth lit her up, the scar on her left cheek folding in on itself. It was a rare sight, one Lexa hadn´t been offered very often, and warmth pooled like relief in the back of her throat, sliding down to settle in her insides.

“I almost didn´t believe Anya when she said who was at the door.”

“I´m not surprised. It´s been two years.”

“We would have worried about you, but at least you got word to us that you were fine.”

Lexa bit her lip, then gave a nod, the space of time too large between them, unsure how to fill it up.  “I didn´t want you to think I´d ran, on purpose.”

Anya snorted from the bed and Lexa´s cheeks warmed, looked at her before looking back to Indra, still sitting on her desk and watching Lexa openly.

“I always knew you´d go back home, if the chance came. I´m glad you had that opportunity.”

Weak-kneed at the knowledge, after years, that the woman in front of her didn´t harbour hatred, didn´t feel betrayed, Lexa wrapped her arm tighter around her brother.

“I was so grateful for everything you did to me.”

And it was too hard to say, there, in front of Aden, that Lexa had wanted more than anything to be back here.

Indra cocked her head. “And now you´re back.”

Clearing her throat, Lexa felt her cheeks grow even warmer as she felt moisture prickling at her eyes, casting her eyes towards the ceiling to try to push the feeling down, to stop it from drowning her. “My—our mother, she died.” Aden twitched under her arm, and she wished she could shield him from all of it, from everything. “We were back in the system, they were going to send Aden to a foster home again, but me…”

“To one of those group homes.”

Knowledge of what that meant burned in Indra´s words, wrapped themselves in her vowels and pulled at her syllables.

“Yes.”

Some group homes were not so bad, but Lexa had heard stories. She´d spent months in her last foster places trying to get to her brother, shipped to three in as many months, one of them finally sending her running, not even knowing where her brother was.

“And ran with an extra this time, I see.”

Indra´s eyes finally fell to Aden, Lexa tugging him out to stand in front of her like before, pulling him against her front so Indra could see him.  Her hands folded over his chest, and she could feel his heart pounding against his ribs, betraying the nerves his face hid so well.

“Hello, Aden.”

Aden looked up at Lexa, then back to Indra. “How do you know my name?”

“Lexa told me about you, when she was here last time.”

“What´s your name, then?”

Indra´s lips tugged in what could have been amusement, but was quickly squashed down. “My name is Indra.”

“What is this place?”

“This is…” Indra crossed her arms, leaning more heavily against the desk. “This is somewhere safe, for kids like you. Kids with nowhere else to go.”

“You take all of them?”

Lexa wished a lot of things, and her brother not having to know just how many kids had nothing, were hungry, were alone, was one of those things. Him not having to be one of them, another. None of them having to be them followed that wish.

Indra´s eyes flicked away, before looking back to Aden. He was watching her openly, and Lexa knew just how hard it was to have to spill truth to those wide eyes. “Unfortunately, no. I wish I could, but there´s not enough space, enough resources. I take in the ones most desperate, the ones who cause the least trouble, the ones who are quick and smart and motivated.”

“You looked after Lexa.”

“She was especially pathetic, yes.”

Lexa rolled her eyes and Anya snorted from the bed again.

“Anya.” Anya looked to Indra, trepidation playing on her face. “That bruise coming up on Lexa´s cheek—will that be the last?”

“Yeah, I figure we´re even now.”

“Good.”

Eyes back on the two in the doorway, Indra said, “Anya will take you to one of the empty rooms, you´ll have to share, we´re a bit packed what with the weather.”

Against her front, something in Aden relaxed.

“That´s no problem." Lexa said. " We prefer that, anyway.”

Indra´s expression didn´t change. “I thought as much. We´ll talk tomorrow, Lexa. We need to discuss how this is all going to work….he´s young.”

When Lexa nodded, Anya pushed herself up off the bed and walked past them, her shoulders brushing past Lexa´s. It was a relief that she didn´t do it roughly, that most of her malice had glanced itself of Lexa´s cheekbone. With a final look at Indra, one hundred questions threatening to explode from her tongue, Lexa tugged Aden to walk in front of her and turned, following Anya. They walked up the creaking metal steps and ended up in a corner room, two mattresses on the floor and a small window on the wall, rain still smattering against the glass.

Anya leant against the doorframe and watched the two of them in the small space, standing in the middle of the room, Aden small and skinny and everything. He looked around the room, bare and the walls a little dirty. His eyes tracked over the mattresses, the single window, Anya, until they fell on Lexa, her brow pressed together as she waited.

“This is way better than the bridge.”

Almost smiling, Lexa dropped her backpack at her feet. She glanced around as if everything didn´t hinge on this battered building and its battered people, giving a one shouldered shrug. “Yeah, I think it is.”

From the door, Anya asked, “You guys have a sleeping bag?”

Licking her lips, Lexa nodded. “We have one.”

“I´ll grab you another.”

She disappeared without another word, her boots clattering a little on the stairs. Lexa suddenly felt the lack of her presence, after not having her around for so long, just having her near from the last few minutes had left Anya weaseled in back under her skin.

“Can I have that bed?”

Tearing her eyes from the empty doorway, Lexa looked back to her brother. He was pointing to the mattress under the window.

“Sure.” Lexa nodded, tried to ignore the way her voice rasped a little at the look in her brother´s eye. The happiness at a ratty mattress on a rattier floor. “Sure you can.”

He dropped his bag on it, sitting down in the middle and bouncing a little. “It´s comfy.”

Anything was comfy after sleeping on cement, where the cold crept through no matter how many layers you wore.

“Good.”

Aden stared up at her and Lexa sat down on her own mattress, the foam sinking under her, her eyes level to her brother´s.

“Lexa?”

“Mm?”

“What will we do here?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“How long we stay.”

Aden looked around again, his eyes ending up focused on the doorway where the cat walk was just visible.

“I´d like to stay.”

Lexa knew that look in his eye, had seen it on her own face, reflected in dirty glass when she´d first arrived somewhere with people who didn´t yell at her, or chase her, or leave her battered. Somewhere that had warmth, and food.

“Plus,” Aden continued, “I saw they had cereal and pasta. I´m kind of sick of sandwiches.”

Lexa choked on a laugh. He said it like he was confessing something, a guilty thought that had played in the back of his mind.

“Yeah, I kind of am, too.”

He gave her a shy smile, something flittered between them, something familiar and soft that left Lexa´s throat aching.

“Here you go.” The sleeping bag, rolled tight, hit Lexa in the side and she looked back to the door where Anya stood looking a little pleased with herself. “You guys eaten tonight?”

“We did.”

Anya raised an eye brow. “Enough, though?”

Lexa looked to Aden, checking his face but he gave a shake of his head. Eyes back on Anya, Lexa nodded. “Enough.”

“Okay, do I need to go over the rules again?”

Lexa knew the rules. But Aden didn´t, and it seemed easier if he got the same introduction everyone else did.

Before she could say anything though, Aden piped up. “I don´t know the rules.”

Pressing her lips together to hide another smile at the way her brother´s voice rose with eagerness, Lexa watched Anya cross her arms and lean against the doorf rame once more. Her eyes were all smoke and armour, strength and battle. But there was something in Anya, a lilt to her voice when she wanted to give it, a curve of her lips, that betrayed that hardness.

“Okay—we all contribute, in whatever way. Indra will talk to you tomorrow to find out how that will be. Clean up after yourself, and speak with Gustus to find out what you need to do to help in the building as much as you can. No fighting. No drugs. None. You´re found with drugs, you´re out. That´s it, that´s the rules.”

Aden´s face was scrunched up, a picture not unlike when he was small and trying to understand what was going on. “What´s…countreebute?”

Anya, despite herself, smiled. “Contribute. It means help out.”

Aden nodded. “I can help out. I do at home, don´t I, Lex?”

Lexa nodded distractedly, her thoughts on what Indra would want them to do. There were a lot of ways of helping out there, each person´s contribution a little different. Before, Lexa had scrounged food. They knew all the places people wasted, threw out unopened packets because they were a day past their used by date, malls in which you could get enough food to feed them all for a night. They new the dumpsters that had books, electrical things, all kinds of stuff left to the elements.

There were the kids that had learnt to pick pocket a little, a certain target they learnt to focus on, and only those who were small and fast had done it.

Lexa had been small and fast, guided under Anya.

But then there were the books, and some of the older ones that pushed to kids to learn, to read. Indra had connections, had routes to get as many of them off the streets as she could.

“Indra will speak to you guys in the morning, then. You know how it is, Lexa. You´re free to come and go, upstairs and downstairs.” She cleared her throat. “I, uh, grabbed this, in case he´d want it.”

Something heavy landed next to her on the bed, and then Anya was gone before Lexa could say thank you.

“Is that a book?”

Aden´s eyes had lit up, the nervous look that played at his face constantly faded a little. Lexa looked down and nodded.

“It´s Roald Dhal.”

In moments, Aden had scooted over to her bed, and soon they were laid out, both sleeping bags open over them. Words stuttered out of Aden´s mouth, his voice a little high, hushed as he whispered and told a story of a boy named George and his medicine. His head pressed against her shoulder, and when he fell asleep with heavy breaths and the book fallen to the floor, Lexa stared up the ceiling, so like the one she´d stared up at her first night there three years ago, and wondered if this was really the best thing she could have done for him.

She heard someone laugh downstairs, the sound foreign and loud, heard footsteps along the cat walk. Nervousness at the people who were there should have played at her stomach, but Lexa had never heard of an incident here, it was outside that pressed down, looming and unknown. Here, Indra kept them all in line. It wasn´t very late, and Lexa felt energy making her want to bounce her leg, to pace, to run. Aden snuffled in his sleep, rolled a little, his head falling from her shoulder to the mattress and Lexa took the opportunity to slip out the bed and stand in the middle of the dark room, the light from the moon and streetlights outside spilling over the bed Aden had chosen, empty as it would probably be most nights.

He was tiny in the bed, a tiny lump made of tiny, basic needs. He was too young, younger than Indra normally had here, younger than normally wondered the streets. Younger kids were homed more easily, picked up by police and shelters faster and Lexa´s stomach twisted: he could be in a house right now, going to school in the morning, not laced in uncertainty and lost in a city so big you could disappear in it.

He was sound asleep. His breathing rhythmic, and when someone dropped something down stairs, the noise clattering and loud, he didn´t move, didn´t flinch.

When Aden slept, he was out.

Slipping out the door, Lexa closed it behind her.

No one went into rooms with closed doors, here. There was a respect, an understanding.

On the catwalk, the metal beneath her feet creaked ever so slightly, the runway old and rusting just slightly. Hands clutching the rail, Lexa looked down. Some people milled near the eating area, some still sprawled over the couches. The smell of damp people who never showered enough hung in the air, not strong, but there. Indra´s door was closed and after a second of ringing the rail under her hands, Lexa turned and walked as quietly as she could around to the other side, a door there open, always open, and walked in. She went up the stairs the room led to and at the top, pushed open the door. The cool air from the roof spilled over her cheeks and she gulped it down, not sure why, when they were finally somewhere safer than most, she felt like she couldn´t breathe.

The rain was still falling, light, almost a mist, and she let it coat her face, sitting on the edge of the wall, her heels kicking against the brick, her legs flying out only to feel that tug of gravity as they fall back down to bounce again. Buildings stretched out in front and around her, soft lights from some, most in this area empty and unused. Everything smelt like rain, like a cleansing, and as gravity kept pulling her feet back to the brick, Lexa wondered if something out there kept pulling her back here. But when she thought of a pull, of something infallible and inevitable and unfightable, Lexa thought of eyes too blue, eyes that sucked her in and left her breathless. Of lips that tugged like a tide at the shore, fingers that dragged her under.

Lexa thought of Clarke Griffin, a girl she collided with twice, really, someone she needed to forget and put down to coincidence, even as her mind plucked at gravity, at physics, at something undeniable.

“Has the view changed?”

Lexa didn´t even jump at the voice. Anya pulled herself up onto the edge, sitting next to her, her feet swinging in time, a rhythm they built together pulling at their feet.

“Not at all.” The mist was fading, their air still sitting damp and heavy over their skin, even as the rain ceased.

“Does your face hurt?”

Lexa smirked a little. Yes, it did. “Not at all

Anya huffed a laugh.

Something assembled in her stomach, slid up her chest and sat heavy on her tongue. Words formed and before she could swallow them down, Lexa let them spill out past her lips. “I´m sorry.”

Anya´s feet, the thudding, paused for a moment before she let them fall again, giving into it, somehow even more in time than she had been before. “Thanks.”

Something deep,  something etched into her ribs, eased a little and Lexa turned her head, watching Anya´s profile as she stared out ahead of her. “Do you need an explanation?”

Anya sighed, her breath a visible huff in the cool air. “Don´t _need one_.” She turned to look Lexa in the eye. “But I _want_ one.”

Giving a nod, Lexa dug her fingers into the brick beneath her hands, let it bite into fingerprints, wondering if anything could alter something apparently so permanent. “You know they managed to grab us both?”

Anya nodded. Lexa remembered the feeling of the wind on her face, pulling at her hair as she´d run, Anya´s footsteps leading her in the opposite direction, always the plan, to confuse whoever was chasing them. The money clutched in her fingers was burning hot, and Lexa had been so sure she´d get away. Then a hand had snatched out, grabbed at the back of her jumper and yanked her back and Lexa´s head had cracked against the pavement. When she´d been bundled into the back of a police car, not the first time, her stomach had sunk like it was filled with stones when she´d seen Anya been pushed into the back of another. The story they´d perfected, the names they new, the lies they wrapped in more lies, given by people who knew names they could use without rap sheets, ran around and around in her head, ready to spill to help save both their skins. Normally, they´d be given a slap on the wrist in the street, occasionally in the station.

Their eyes had locked for a desperate second and Lexa hadn´t been able to read the look on Anya´s face.

“I was angry you´d been caught. You were too young and my responsibility.”

Lexa rolled her eyes. “We were each other’s responsibility.”

Anya gave a shrug, her heart not in it. The two years she had on Lexa may as well have been a life time to her.

Gulping air, filling her lungs and letting it out in a long, slow breath, Lexa calmed enough to keep on talking. “You were driven off but then this lady was banging on the window and speaking to the police. I didn´t leave you behind Anya, I didn´t.” Lexa swallowed down the tone in her voice, tried to calm the desperation she knew pulled at her vocal cords. “This lady had been one of my old case workers, she recognised me. She talked them into letting her take me from the station, to not charge me.”

Lexa had panicked, had felt her entire body go numb. Had argued and said she didn´t want to go but no one had listened. She thought they would take her back to foster care, another home, and the memory of the last one had left a dent in her so wide it felt more like a hole.

“So…you didn´t drop me in it?”

Lexa sighed, the brick still biting at her palms, her fingers. “Well, I did. Just not on purpose. It was some kind of fluke: my mom´s case had just passed through court, she´d somehow been given back custody.” The woman had told her and Lexa had felt herself go even colder, realised it meant been back with her mother, nowhere she wanted to be. Where she had been, with Indra, with Anya, it had worked, had felt like safety, a net she´d never known before but once she´d had it, didn´t want to lose. “It was the only reason the woman had recognised me. My case had just come up and she´d seen my photo again. She told me Aden was going back to her the next day…I couldn´t run again, because…I couldn´t leave Aden there alone, it was bad enough at the foster house.”

Lexa hadn´t been able be with him in the foster house he´d been in, but she could be with him at home. She _needed_ to be with him at home. He had barely been six, then. Barely six and with a mother that forgot to come home, that lost herself in a bottle, that used drugs like they made her a better person when all they did was tear her apart and leave her floundering.

“Maybe, uh,” Anya´s voice was rough, and she cleared her throat. “Maybe you didn´t deserve that hit, then.”

Lexa shrugged. “You didn´t know. I know it looked like I had ran, or taken the easy road. But once they knew my name, I couldn´t give them any kind of story that supported yours.”

Sighing, Anya dropped her head back, her eyes staring up at the black sky, rolling with clouds. “Yeah, once they knew I was lying, I said goodbye to any chance of talking my way out. I think I would have got community service, but then they realised I was homeless…so I did thirty days in juvie, then was put back in the system.”

And had run, obviously, back; but that didn´t need to be said.

“I really am sorry.”

“I was so angry at you.”

“I was angry at me, too.”

And Anya gave her something, then, words that wrapped themselves around that something deep etched into her ribs even more and somehow made Lexa able to breathe again.

“It wasn´t your fault.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments/feedback always appreciated :)


	7. Absorption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Light and angst. I´m not sure how I managed that...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with this story, for the kudos and the awesome words. I´m so glad people like this. Okay...there is more angst. But also some light? I think? I tried? And, also...spoiler alert...the girls will see each other next chapter. In case anyone needs to know that since it´s now chapter seven....

There was a moment when Lexa woke that something in her chest expanded and she felt like she was home. Not home, at her mother´s, but home, the feeling that was meant to go with the word. That feeling that slid itself along your insides to nestle in and beat alongside your heart.

She knew the sounds that echoed around, voices that murmured, thuds that meant someone was walking up or down the stairs. Soft breaths echoed in the room and Aden snuffled in his sleep, rubbing his face into their shared pillow, his hair flopping with the motion, molten like sand that eased through fingers.

When he finally grumbled awake, blinking and stretching, he sat up suddenly, his eyes darting around the room.

“Hey.” Lexa´s voice was thick with sleep, low and gravelly.

Aden´s eyes found hers as he twisted to look at her.

“I wasn´t cold.” He said.

The fact that he woke up and was warm, the feeling alarming, made Lexa swallow, force a smile. “Good. You hungry?”

He nodded before his look darkened just slightly, eyebrows bunching together. “We don´t have to have peanut butter, do we?”

Lexa poked him in the ribs, her fingers wriggling to make him squirm away, his face lighting for a moment with a smile that warmed her. “Nope, doubtful. You said you saw cereal.”

At the end of the bed, as far from her tickling as he could be, Aden asked, “But what about milk? I didn´t see a fridge.”

Lexa lifted her foot and poked him in the ribs again with her socked toe, smirking when he thudded slightly off the mattress with a squawk, his lips curving upwards. “They have magic milk.”

Cross-legged on the floor, he eyed her, suspicion deep in his eyes. “Magic milk?”

“Yup.”

Lexa sat up, reorganising her hair and pulling her hoodie on.

“You´re tricking me.”

“Yup.”

She smirked and he returned it, rolling his eyes for good measure.

“No, but seriously, what about milk?”

He followed her out, close to her side and she dropped her hand over his shoulders as they walked down the stairs, their feet in a matching rhythm. Some teens she didn´t know lolled on the sofas and when they wandered to the make-shift kitchen, mismatched and organised and loved, Lexa felt her breath still in her chest.

“Lincoln?”

Somehow, he was bigger. He´d always been big, all hard muscle and bulking height, yet soft spoken and careful eyes. And now, he´d surpassed that and with surprise Lexa realised he must be twenty-one by then.

“Lexa.”

There was no rise in tone, just expectation. He had already been told she was here and he was grinning, his teeth flashing. He walked up looked like he was about to hug her, then remembered. Remembered the girl who shied away from that, remembered the back stepping, the darting eyes. Instead, he held out his hand and they grasped forearms. His touch was soft, his fingers gentle, his eyes a brown like liquid warmth.

“It´s damn good to see you.”

She bit her lip, felt it fight the repression. “You two.”

“You look all grown up.”

Their hands fall and somehow Lexa missed the contact immediately, the sureness of his grip, the press of his fingers. Her shoulders pulled up in a shrug and Aden pressed against her back.

“Not really.”

There was something in his eye at that, unplaceable. “Good.” His eyes dropped down and he dropped to a knee, looking Aden straight in his cautious eyes. “Hey—I hear you´re Aden.”

Aden stared at him for a moment, then looked back up to Lexa. “Why does everyone know me?”

Lincoln chuckled, warm and rich like butterscotch and Lexa remembered how he would press into one of the sofas with her and Anya and Gustus, his voice a grumble as he and Gustus shared stories and Anya accused them of exaggeration. “I´m magic.”

Aden gave him the same look he´d given Lexa minutes before, a look of preteen _whatever_. “Indra told you.”

The laugh that burst from Lincoln was all surprise. “She did. I´m Lincoln, it´s great to meet you. You hungry?”

Lincoln was still kneeling on the ground. When Aden nodded his head enthusiastically, Lincoln asked, “What for?”

Eyes darted to Lexa, unsure, before back to Lincoln. “I thought I saw cereal?”

“You did. Want some?”

Aden nodded again, his hair flopping like it had that morning. It really did need to be cut, but Lexa loved how it trailed under her hand, the curls falling. “But do you have milk?”

Lincoln nodded, standing up. “Come let me show you some _real_ magic.”

Eyes flicking to Lexa again, Aden followed Lincoln over to a pellet bench at her nod, his eyes wide and curious. Lincoln pulled out a can of powdered milk and held it out, Aden looking from Lincoln to the can and back again.

“That´s not magic _or_ milk.”

Lincoln chuckled again and Lexa crossed her arms, letting Aden have his moment of cheek.

“Well, Aden, who seems to know everything.” Lincoln said. “Watch and learn.” Without even looking up, Lincoln said, “Lexa, Indra wanted to speak to you when you had a moment.”

She nodded, her eyes on Aden who was glued to Lincoln´s side, watching him spoon powder into a bottle of water.

“You okay here, Aden.”

He glanced up, suddenly a little pale. “Where are you going?”

Her feet took her a step toward him before she could stop them. “Just Indra´s office.”

With a lip caught between his teeth, Aden looked from Lexa to Lincoln.

“You can come.” Lexa offered.

“Or,” Lincoln said, “you can make the magic happen.”

He held out the bottle and the cap, and Aden´s lips quirked up a little. He reached for it, pausing to look back at Lexa once before taking the bottle. “I´m okay here.”

Lexa nodded to Lincoln who barely noticed, his focus on Aden. With one last glance back at her brother, Lexa crossed the warehouse floor, nodding at the two she past sprawled on a sofa. They nodded back, one with an iPod in his ears and the other with a book.

The door was open, and Lexa stood in the doorway, her hand hovering to knock. Before she could, Indra turned to face her form her desk. “Lexa.”

“Hi.”

There was a feeling in her arms like they were too long, so she buried her hands in the pocket of her hoody, knotted them together. With no idea why, her heart pounded, the sound a drum in her ears.

“Come in.”

She did, taking a seat in a spare chair and pulling a leg up under her.

“Sleep well?”

Lexa nodded. “You?”

“Yes. We´ve done a lot of work on the building, it´s much warmer than it once was.”

Eyes looking around the room, and partly out the door before back to Indra, Lexa nodded. “It´s looking really good.”

For a beat, they eyed each other off. Indra had hesitated when Lexa had first turned up here, bruised face and bleeding lip, her scrawniness, her age, the anger, the way she didn´t offer words.

“Your brother is young.”

“He is. So was I.”

“Not that young.” Indra leant back in her chair. “He could be in a school, in a home. At his age, the placement is faster, easier.”

A muscle in Lexa´s jaw ticked and she measured her words before she spoke. “It doesn´t mean it will be a good one. Or a permanent one. He could have been moved constantly—probably would have been.” Lexa hesitated over the next words, then let them come. “Plus, I really think he would have ran away this time. I know he would have.”

Indra gave a nod. She knew that better than most.

“There´s really no family? Nothing?”

Lexa swallowed, too heavily, the pull at her throat unsettling her. “No one.”

“I´m sorry about your mother.”

That moment, again, in which Lexa had to look up at the ceiling and blink rapidly, something prickling in her throat. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Thank you.”

“So.” Indra just watched her as she spoke, gauging her. Lexa had never known anyone to read people like she did, the way she would size people up and make a decision. That decision was never one that changed. “What is your plan?”

Lexa blinked at her. Cleared her throat, the silence and expectation of her answer pressing down at her.

“No plan?” The lack of surprise in Indra´s voice bothered Lexa but shouldn´t have, really.

“I want to be his legal guardian, when I can.”

Indra nodded. “How do you think that will play out, when they find out you´ve had him on the streets with you, out of school, for two years when you apply?”

"I…” Lexa leant forward, dropped her foot to the floor and leant her elbows on her knees to look at Indra. The plan that had been itching at the back of her mind for days pressed to be worded, to be shaped, to be given a place to settle and grow. “I had one idea…”

“Tell me.”

Aden, she explained, could lie. He could say he ran, Lexa could agree, maybe, possibly, someone else could testify to that fact. They could pretend she´d never found him on the street until she turned eighteen, then they could approach child services and petition for guardianship.

Indra watched her at that, skeptical. “That could work. But what would make you someone they would give him to? An eighteen year old who dropped out of school to live on the streets at sixteen? One with a little bit of a record?”

“A record that will disappear when I turn eighteen.”

Indra cocked her head again. “And the other point?”

“I´ll find a job. I´ll work legitimately. I´ll get us an apartment, eventually.”

One day, Lexa would take courses and get her high school diploma. One day, Lexa would go back to school. That idea, though, floated, weightless and worthless and like something she thought of once, in a dream that had no substance anymore.

Indra nodded. “It could all work, Lexa. And we can help you with some of it. But what about the next year and whart—several months? With the system, two years before anything was finalised? What about Aden?”

And there, that was where Lexa stuttered and stalled. He was safe, with her. This place, it was safe. But he was eight, and living in a crack in the system.

“I don´t know.”

And she really, really didn´t. She had no idea what to do with Aden.

“We can think about it. There are options.” Indra´s voice was so much like Lincoln´s. Lexa had heard it tight with anger, had heard her bark orders at people and watched them jump into line. But at times like this, it was reassurance and thought.

“I thought…if we could fake his record somehow, or a birth certificate, we could enrol him in school.”

Indra didn´t dismiss it straight away. “Papers like that, digital issues, takes months. More, even. And money.” She paused, then shrugged. “I can ask around. Before that, we can look at schooling him, with Gustus.”

Gustus who had a voice as soft as feathers and pulled each kid under his wing. Gustus, who had made Lexa study algebra and literature, made Anya read when all she wanted to was fight someone, anger burning in her eyes, Gustus, who chased them all for answers to questions he´d sent them out with. Who had been a teacher, once, before all this. Had worked in a shelter part time, and seen the broken system, and disappeared with Indra to help fix it where he could. They built pathways between them, used old connections, got kids jobs, helped them find apartments, help them build a life back up when they´d all been torn down.

“Where is Gustus?”

Something in Lexa ached, then, to see him. To watch his gruff face warm. To introduce him to Aden.

“He´s at his apartment. He and Lincoln opened a bar. Somewhere we can use as a place with tax, with legal ins and outs. They have an apartment above it.”

They´d always talked about a bar, one of the things she and Anya had rolled their eyes at.

“They finally opened it? Did they call it what they always said they would?”

“Grounders?” At Lexa´s nod, Indra rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

Lexa huffed a laugh through her nose. It was what Gustus had always called them all, grounded and stuck and finding their feet.

“Aden,” Lexa ventured, “he wants to help. He wants to contribute.”

Indra shook her head. “He´s not working the streets.”

Lexa let out a breath she hadn´t known she´d been holding. In reality, he was perfect: small, quick, wide-eyed and innocent looking. With Indra, they had never pick pocketed a lot, but it was a necessary thing, something Indra had taught Lincoln, who taught them all. They had a particular client, never anyone who looked like a student, who clambered for money probably more than they did, never someone in beat up shoes, never one of their own. Always people with a certain clean look, a cut to their clothes, wrapped up in phone conversations and appointments.

Not that that made it better, but it was something.

“If he ever got picked up, he´d be lost in that foster system.” Indra glanced out the open door, her eyes tracing something Lexa couldn´t see. “We´ve been trying to get to a point where we don´t need the kids doing it anymore. The bar…”

When she didn´t keep speaking, Lexa asked her, “How can we help, then?”

They had to help. Nothing there worked on its own. It built up from a team, from sharing work and doing what they all could.

Indra´s eyes fell back to hers, eyes wells of understanding. “You can teach him to scrounge: the areas, the places. He can team with you, and with Anya; she doesn´t go much anymore, though. He can also be here, cleaning. Lincoln is doing work on the building, he can help.”

Lexa nodded. “Okay.”

“Gustus will teach you, too. We have a kid the age you were when you first arrived, another a year younger. He´s been doing a lot with them.”

Lexa had to ask, she had to know. “And a job?”

No job meant no guardianship. No apartment. No security. No Aden. It didn´t even guarantee those things.

Indra surveyed her then, and gave one slow blink. “We could try you in the bar.”

That made Lexa pause, her eyes flitting away to settle back on Indra. “But I´m only sixteen.”

“As long as you aren´t handling alcohol, it´s fine. You can waitress, clean up, do dishes, do some of the food prep.” Indra grinned then, her scar deepening, a shadow across her face that Lexa knew intimidated some but just felt familiar. “All that fun stuff.”

“Will it be legitimate?” Something was rising up, was threatening to spill in her throat and down to her fingertips: something that felt a little like hope.

“We can put you on legitimately. It´s easy to pretend we didn´t know you´re a runaway if they ask. Besides...” Indra paused, something in her eye that clouded like grief, “Once you´re over sixteen, they kind of stop caring.”

Lexa wondered why she lived in a world that for her, that was a good thing.

 

* * *

 

School and friends and life wrapped themselves around Clarke and she threw herself into studying, into Finn, into anything. Especially into the parties they all had one by one, taking it in turns to trash one of their houses when their parents are away. They always lay about in the aftermath, the others gone home and their core group pressed in amongst each other. They´d fall asleep with their friends breathing in their ear and wake up tangled, or with someone different, or with an extra.

Some of them fell on each other, lips and tongue, alcohol streaming through their blood, and muttered the next day that nothing had happened. Monroe and Harper were repeat offenders, until Jasper rolled his eyes and asked them who they were kidding. They still just slid each other sideways glances and shy smiles, and Clarke watched them, astounded that two people so interested in each other wasted so much time dancing around it. Usually, Clarke ended up spooning Octavia and Raven, grateful Raven would wink at anyone who had tried to take a fold out couch and claim, “Leg” until whoever was trying to take it muttered and slid off. The three of them would fall on, Raven´s brace on the ground and a chuckle falling from her lips. The mornings were always filled with painful groans, with the smell of coffee and bacon and eggs, with bottles clinking together as they all pitched in to pick up the carnage. The summer was well behind them, Autumn closing in and shedding golden brown across the ground. The air had started to bite at their cheeks and most of them were kissed red by it, beanies pulled over their ears and kicking leaves up to watch them play in the wind.

There were nights things felt like they´d pull Clarke under, dinner with her parents would stir up questions, discussions. Her dad would leave a heavy hand on her head and her mum would smile at them both, and then her parents would speak about college and bring up medical school, her aptitude for biology and science, the need Clarke had always had to help people, to give them what they needed to sooth what ate at them. And Clarke would feel everything inside her halt at the fear that she _just didn´t know if that was what she wanted._

Some nights, the pressure of the future falling around her ears, Clarke would sit at her desk, her text book open in front of her but her pencil in her art book, and sketch out lips and eyes and hands and shadows. She´d remember the last time she´d soothed someone, really seen the pain tugging at their insides, pooling in their eyes, and the way she´d literally just offered herself up with zero explanation. Lexa had needed something and Clarke had wanted to give it, to pull herself open and drag her parts out for Lexa to sift through and take what she craved. It felt like a distant memory, a daydream, a scene from a movie she´d seen that had seeped into a deep part of her, lulled into her brain.

After weeks, her eyes stop glancing around for Lexa. Monty´s digging had said enough: Lexa was at a different school and it would be easier to just let it go.

Would be easier.

Instead, she pushed Lexa to the back of her mind. Pushed the burn of her lips, the stroke of her tongue, the tug of her fingertips to a place in her mind Clarke could ignore them. Let them fade into that strange dream state and let them be.

Sometimes, when she was kissing Finn, she didn´t think of Lexa at all.

 

* * *

 

Nights grew colder but the warehouse didn´t hold the bite it once had. Lincoln took Aden and Lexa around, showed the patched up holes, insulation they found or taken from other empty buildings. Aden listened to it all and one day, a hammer in hand, he sat in the weak sun at the roof, Lincoln squatting next to him, and Lexa watched with her heart in her throat as he fixed tiles, a spot in which the water came through. Days later, when it rained, he dragged Lexa to the spot and stood under it, the rain hammering on the glass at the windows, and none of that rain made its way inside. Aden grinned so hard she thought they both might shatter.

For weeks, she didn´t let him out of her sight. Lexa and Anya led him to places they knew they could pull out bags of thrown out food. At the end of each term, the kids at college who moved dumped enough to stock boxes for days. Supermarkets wasted too much and a lot of workers who emptied the stock into the bins outside turned a blind eye to the kids that scuttled out, fingers desperate and bags ready. Aden learnt to clean windows, to fix things, to use his hands. Indra had connections, people who helped her get hold of first aid gear, donations sent to shelters she could haul in: warmer clothes, sleeping bags, pillows, a newer mattress, extra gas for the camping stove. There was a place they could go for showers, and Lexa did everything she could to get him there more than a couple of times a week. He saw things she wished he didn´t, if they were out too late, darkness pressing down and all the horrors the day stifled leaking out; fights breaking out, people laid in corners with needles in their arms, a brutal police officer.

Most nights Aden slept well, but many nights Lexa lay awake, Aden sprawled out besides her, sharing his heat, and second guessing everything she did.

Gustus hadn´t cared about Lexa´s aversion to hugs, had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him. She´d tensed, but let him, her fingers tugging at her hem, the smell of him the same and the gruffness still all an act. Lexa had watched him bring a puppy back to life with a dropper of milk and sugar, his huge hands enveloping it and his voice a soft hum. The dog, huge now, a patchwork of breeds, bounded at her and bowled her over. Aden was in love with it instantly.

The readings Gustus gave them, the old textbooks that lined one of the shelves, the maths he patiently had them repeat, all meant nothing, Lexa knew that. Nothing official, nothing that could go on their record. But knowing that Aden had some kind of structure, something, made her feel better. Once he got back into school, if he got back into school, he wouldn´t be so far behind.

Some of the nights Lexa lay awake, sleep burning at her eyes but evading her with each breath, she scooted away from Aden and went back downstairs. Some of the kids that were new were there, the ones Lexa had known before all moved on, most to things Indra and Gustus had set up for them. But the newer ones were nice, rough around the edges but good kids who deserved more to be grasping at this version of normalcy. The youngest, Arti, was as close to a friend that Aden could say he now had. Gustus gave them the same material to look at and Lexa often made Arti sit down to actually do it, or dragged them in a free moment to the Library. Most nights, he slept on a couch, and no one made him move. He had an aversion to closed in spaces, and even his room was too small. In summer, Anya had told her, he´d slept on the roof with only the blanket of stars to close in on him. Those nights Lexa stumbled downstairs, a soft glow still lit the building, one that never really went out from muggy streetlights outside, there was always someone still up, who would offer a hot tea or coffee, or Anya and Lincoln would be there, and those were Lexa´s favourite nights.

Lincoln had taught Lexa, thirteen and angry, to fight.

Never, he told her, and repeatedly had to say to Anya, a roll to his eyes as he did so, for fun, but to protect themselves, to fight _back_ if never need be.

The day he´d first stood in front of Lexa and shown her to throw a bunch, his fingers gentle as they untucked her thumb, the bruises from being undefended had still lingered on her skin, marks that sunk themselves deep and permanently spoiled her bones.

Now, two years later and rusty, she sparred in a back room, a big one, one set up with filthy old mats they´d wiped down a thousand times, stained and splitting their insides. Lincoln reminded her of focus, of breathing, of momentum and using force to deflect an opponent, to incapacitate and run. Anya, before all fire and boiling blood and coal eyed, now laughed at Lexa, poked her arm and Lexa thought, vacantly, that she simmered now more than boiled. Hours later, sweat cooling on their skin, they sat in the frigid air on the roof, their feet swinging and sharing a drink of beer or a cigarette. Most of the time, Indra or Gustus joined them, and Lexa knew just below Aden slept in a bed with a blanket, his stomach full and a book just fallen from his hand; in those moments, Lexa forgot to second guess herself, forgot that anxiety should be crawling up her throat and choking her and instead breathed easy, the press of arms against hers and the chatter of her crew around her.

 

* * *

 

Clarke absorbed the news of her father´s death with a simple blink, a slight parting of her lips and a rush of air from between them. Her mother´s eyes glittered when she told her, when she pulled Clarke out of school and her fingers clasped Clarke´s arm in a way that was almost painful. She had five perfect green circles for days.

Things passed in a blur and Clarke wanted to clutch at those moments, to cling them to her chest and not let them go, keeping her in a time closer to when her father was alive. But it was useless; they just slipped away from her like when she was small and trying to cup the seawater in her hands to carry with her. The funeral was horrid and Clarke just remembered the sky was blue, the sun bright in the chilly air, as if it hadn´t got the memo that they were all supposed to be in mourning. There were black clothes and her mother, straight backed and red eyed. A ground that swallowed her father whole and left Clarke achingly with nothing.

Part way through the wake, she stumbled to her room, the door clicking shut behind her. Her breaths were gasping and her fingers clawed at her chest, trying to pull it out, to wrench whatever it was from inside that left her feeling so empty, so heavy, so unable to breathe. It was Raven´s front pressed against her back, her arms wrapped around Clarke´s waist and Octavia along the line of her front, the pressure of them against her hyperactive, overstimulated nerves what slowly brought Clarke´s breathing back to normal. As her oxygen levels returned to normal, a sob cleaved from her throat and Clarke slowly sank to her knees, her friends a puddle around her.

The next month ached, if time could do that, and Clarke wandered away from school when she could, her mind a cloud of grief. The weather was freezing, now, and she welcomed the sting in her fingertips, the bite to her lungs as she gulps lungfuls of air by the river. Even when she left alone, one of her friends would find her, would press along her side and walk with her, or sit with her, and the other who didn´t fo would collect their homework and make a list of all the things they missed, passing it to Clarke with nothing but a hug.

She tried to be present, to acknowledge that her mother was hurting, to find out how to piece themselves together when their puzzle had been torn apart. Most nights Clarke slipped out her window and lay across the grass, a bottle of vodka turning her eyes glassy and numbing the ice of the air in her chest. If Finn showed up, she clung to him, biting at his lips, chasing at something he didn´t have to give. Eventually she´d push away, desperation groping at her throat and frustration scorching behind it.

On her seventeenth birthday, Clarke choked on a smile when her mother gave Clarke her father´s old watch, the metal cool and not holding any of his warmth. She wanted to say thankyou, to say something, but all she managed was a pressing of her lips and her mother´s face mirrored her own.

That night, Clarke got a hold of another bottle of vodka and went to Raven´s, Octavia there, her friends around, and tried to ignore the guilt at leaving her mother in an empty house with nothing but the memory of Clarke´s inability to smile.

She fell asleep with her wrist held to her ear, trying to match her heartbeat with each tick.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and feedback always appreciated :)


	8. Sights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnd after that finale and missing Lexa more than ever, here is chapter eight:

There was something methodical in cleaning the bar; it could have been that it was always somehow filthy, even after Lexa had spent hours the day before cleaning it. But whatever it was, it was soothing, and Lexa found a way to not think. If she was one for that type of thing, it could have been like meditation, slipping into a place her thoughts quietened and it was just her and her movement. This time was her favourite, when the bar was just closing and the last of the regulars were dragging themselves from their stools, a sway in their step.

She´d thought this place would disgust her. That watching people drink away their evenings, watching their nights fade around them, needing it to disappear and bathing themselves in alcohol to make it easier would remind her of her mother. Of wide blown pupils, of the stench of a weeklong bender, of cheap spirit-soaked promises that dissolved to nothing in the harsh light of day. Of flashing blue and red lights, washing the living room and casting shadows on Aden´s cheeks.

But, curiously, it didn´t. It was something new, something fragile, something she settled into and felt like she belonged with. Her hours were all over the place, fitting in depending on Gustus, on Aden, on Indra. But Lexa had signed a contract, had some kind of proof that she was earning legitimate money. It wasn´t a lot, but it was something, and she was allowed to play around in the kitchen. They didn´t do much food, just fries mostly, but Lincoln had insisted they serve something: drunks needed it, and he truly believed it led to less fights, less problems. The bar was quiet during the week, but Lincoln and Gustus had built it up for the weekend, offering half price beers and drawing in a university crowd. They were lax with ID´s, and some of the faces Lexa saw couldn´t have been much older than her own. Some nights, inexplicably, her eyes searched the room for a face she might recognise, before she´d drag them away and tell herself not to lose her mind to fantasy.

“You´re getting good at that.”

There was a plate balanced in Lexa´s hand, piles of glasses tucked under her forearm, looking precarious but balanced perfectly. She shrugged at Lincoln, the glasses barely shifting. “I´m a pro.”

He put two trays of clean glasses down and started putting them away. There were times, still, that Lexa marveled at how his muscles flexed, his strength so obvious, yet something about him always soft and gentle and kind: everything that was him. When they sparred, it was easy to forget he had the ability to lay you flat, to break something within you, when his movements were fast, his footwork resembling a dance.

But then, Lexa had seem him dark eyed and dangerous, had seen him take out someone who threatened one of the kids or her or Indra. There was something buried deep that had been stitched into him, not born.

He was a conundrum.

“Can you finishing stacking these? I need to go out the back and unpack the new order.”

Lexa hummed a yes as she backed into the tiny space that was the kitchen, the dishes going down to get to later. At the end of her nights there, her fingers were often pruned from soap and water, her back aching a little and her eyes burning with a new kind of tiredness.

But it was _her_ pain, _her_ exhaustion. It was _her_ life.

Some nights, Lexa snuck behind the bar and served a few drinks. It was completely illegal but they had a fake ID to use if they were ever checked, and usually it was where she was needed on a Friday or Saturday night.

The bar made no real money, barely managed to do anything but cover costs. They never wanted anything big, their focus the warehouse, the kids, the runaways. But Lincoln had wanted something to his name, and Indra had fallen into the idea when she saw the way it could be used as a stepping stone, the plus side to having a business around linked with tax and doing legitimate operations.

Lincoln, on the street since ten and with Indra since twelve, just liked having something in which a little slice was his.

Glasses unpacked and Lincoln back behind the bar, Lexa wandered out to the tiny office, pushing the swinging door open and sliding into a chair opposite Aden.

His DS was in hand and he was playing the one game he owned, swiped by Anya, his face screwed up in concentration. When Lexa had first started here, walking through the back door with Aden´s hand in her own, his face had lit up when he´d realised he had somewhere to charge his DS. The table was strewn with a notepad and pencil, open books.

He hadn´t even looked up.

“Aren´t you supposed to be doing some kind of report?”

“Did it.”

Blinking at him, Lexa waited for him to make eye contact. Nothing. Leaning forward, she grabbed the notebook and pulled it towards herself. It was filled with notes, headings and the occasional doodle. Sometimes, Aden went quiet, withdrew a little, and Lexa always tended to let him do it and wait for him to come back. It was something he´d learnt from her and she understood the need to crawl inside your own head and live there for a while. Instead, she just sat near him, listened to the little beeps from his DS and let him know she was nearby.

Something in her itched to be back at the warehouse, to get into the back room and blow of some steam.

It had taken weeks, but Lexa had finally remembered the ways to move her body when Anya threw a punch, remembered how to duck under it, to seamlessly pop up behind her and use her body weight to drag her to the ground. Never in her life would Lexa have enough strength to take out Lincoln, and Gustus stood leaning against the wall, his eyes deep and dark and watchful, as Lexa learnt to beat Lincoln, even without his strength. She used her speed, her reflexes, his few flaws against him.

It was addictive having something to throw her body into, to finish gleaming with sweat, her muscles somehow tight and loose all at the same time, chest working for air. She felt cleansed after, limber, felt like she could actually lay down and sleep.

When they finished, she´d lean heavily against the wall of the sparring room, the brick harsh against her back, and Gustus´ arm would rest just against hers, a whisper of connection, something to melt into if she wanted to.

That’s where she was that night after walking back with Lincoln from the bar, Aden half asleep and tight against her side. He´d eaten hot chips in the bar, delighted with the hot food, the salt. She was just glad that, at the warehouse, there was a surprising amount of fruit thrown away they managed to get hold off, some vegies. Gustus made a pasta sometimes, when they had enough of the ingredients to make enough for all of them, that tasted like home was supposed to. It would fill her stomach, warm and thick. That night, before she´d made her way down to spar, Aden had read to her, his voice falling to gravel, to the waves of exhaustion, until his eyes were almost closed, the book an inch from his nose as he tried to keep going. When Lexa´s hand had touched his hair, the book had fallen on his face, his eyes closed and breathing heavy.

When she was sure he was out, she´d gone down to spar: she could rarely sleep without it, anymore, her body wound tight and her thoughts racing until she stood across from Lincoln or Anya, or one of the others Lincoln was in the process of teaching, bouncing on her toes and with somewhere to direct her energy. The best nights where when it was just her and Anya and Lincoln and Gustus and sometimes Indra, settled in easily and something comfortable in the air between them all.

“Aden asked me when he could learn to fight.”

Lexa´s head turned so fast to look at Gustus her neck twinged. He looked at her impassively. She wanted to know when he could have asked, Lexa was never far from his side. But there were times it was just Aden and Gustus pouring over a book, Lexa kicked up on a sofa not far away, but not paying attention, and she realised Aden had asked Gustus for a reason. “How did he know we were fighting?”

“I´ve seen him sitting up at the cat walk, watching from up there through the door. He must have woken up and seen you weren´t there.”

“The doors always closed.”

“Not always.”

“Besides, most of them here are learning. He was always going to know.”

Lexa looked away, swallowing and pressing her lips into a straight line.

“Lexa. Maybe he should.”

“He´s eight.”

Gustus´ voice was low, steady, a thread to cling on to. “He is. But he´s also an eight year old who lives, well…” His hands gestured vaguely. “Here.”

“He has me.”

Lexa´s voice was harsher than she had meant, the words flying out of her mouth with flame. Gustus didn´t even flinch.

“He does. But he can´t always have you.”

Truth was something Gustus always dropped like it was nothing, had always littered the area with and left it behind for people to stumble over, to gather up or avoid as they saw fit. Something in Lexa´s chest rose up, fierce and undiluted, the words forming on her tongue to fight that, to argue, to tell him Aden would _always, always_ have her. They felt like fire in her mouth, threatening to burst but then her eyes caught his, deep and honest and open and everything stuttered.

Gustus had had a brother.

They had all had parents, of some description.

Indra had had a son.

Yet here they all were, without those people.

Blinking at Gustus, the words cooled to a stone on her tongue, she swallowed them down, the truth of them rasping at her throat and in her stomach where they settled.

She gave a nod, one that hurt, hurt like she was shaking apart her insides, and he rest a heavy hand on her shoulder. After a beat, she leant her head against it, the warmth stealing into her skin and brick scraping at her back.

 

* * *

 

Clarke felt like she was drifting. Her house was always quiet, her mother worked more and more, throwing herself into it as if saving others could drown out the pain that she hadn´t saved her own husband. Her mother had tried and tried and Clarke had shut down more and more, not even knowing why, until her mother disappeared into work. They communicated with notes on the kitchen counter, scrawled loops of handwriting that Clarke felt furious with but never threw away.  One night, opposite each other at the counter eating spaghetti, Clarke had said something about school. Her mother had smiled and lifted a hand to push some of Clarke´s hair back from her face and Clarke had felt herself flinch. The moment was too quick to take back, too quick to stop, and guilt bubbled in her stomach at the depth of hurt that etched its way across her mother´s face. Her mother had tried to bury it down, Clarke watched her true, but after that she kept her hands to herself as if scared to feel her daughter´s rejection again.

And Clarke didn´t know why, but she couldn´t bridge that gap.

Their family had always been one for easy affection, touches, hugs, easy laughter. Her father was broad chested and Clarke´s favourite place when she was small was in his arms, her ear pressed against that chest, his heartbeat playing in her ears. She´d drum the beat against his arms with her fingers, and at nights now she still thought she could hear it, steady and secure and loud. The irony that her mother was a cardio-thoracic surgeon and her father had dropped dead in their bedroom one morning from a heart attack, his heart stumbling and failing in his chest, was too much at times. Clarke´s mother had done everything she could but there had been nothing that could be done.

Clarke sould painfully logical, able to sift through facts and draw conclusions and she knew, she _knew_ it wasn´t her mother´s fault but for some reason she still couldn´t meet her eye, couldn´t offer more than tight smiles and short sentences.

The house was quiet.

Everything was pressing down on her and Clarke switched the television on and turned up the volume so loud the neighbours were sure to complain. But then the silence seeped in from the other side of the house so Clarke turned the radio in her room on and then the stereo in the kitchen and the cacophony of voices twined together to drown out that emptiness that had taken over.

But not enough.

So she messaged Octavia and Raven who turned up instantly, bottles of vodka in hand.

Clarke swung the door open and they both flinched at the noise that hit them. Grimacing an apology, Clarke switched it all off and they followed her inside, Raven flopping onto the couch and pulling her braced leg up onto the coffee table with a groan, Octavia beside her with a gap left big enough for Clarke to fill. Bottles of mixers and shot glasses were dumped onto the coffee table and Clarke burrowed between the two girls, their sides all pressed together.

“Shots first?” Octavia asked. She´d voiced concern to Clarke a few weeks ago that maybe she should sleep more, try to look after herself, but then the look of drowning in Clarke´s eyes had made her close her eyes and pull her in for a hug.

“Always.” Raven accepted hers and they chinked them together, spirits spilling over and Clarke´s eyes burning for no reason and they all shot in procession, coughing at the burn.

They did another one then Clarke poured drinks, mixing coke and ice and then leaning back against the couch, the press of her friends skin calming the heart beat that fluttered against her chest.

“You okay?” Raven asked.

Clarke shrugged, their arms rubbing together as she did so. “No.”

Octavia took a pull on her straw, angling slightly so she faced the other two, lifting her legs to lay them over both Raven´s and Clarke´s laps. “Your mum working late again?”

“Yeah.” There was something bitter in how Clarke said it, and she didn´t want that taste in her mouth but she couldn´t stop it from spilling up and out. She sipped her drink, swilling it around her mouth, doing nothing to erase it. “Like always.”

Octavia and Raven made eye contact and Clarke could see it, but ignored it.

“Maybe you should ask her to be around more.” Raven turned her eyes back to Clarke, rushing to continue when Clarke opened her mouth quickly. “Even just in one of your notes.”

Clarke snapped her mouth shut and shook her head. “I don´t even know if I want her around, anyway.”

She had no idea how to word the mess of thoughts and tied up feelings in her chest. How to explain that the hole was huge with her dad dead and mom out all the time but when it was just her and her mom that hole was even bigger, somehow, so big Clarke thought it was going to swallow them both and drag them in.

“Well, O has a plan.”

The tone in Raven´s voice made something in Clarke perk up. “Yeah?” She looked to Octavia, her drink clutched against her chest.

“Well…” Octavia smiled a little. “Bellamy´s back from college this weekend and on Skype he mentioned a bar he was going to go to where they don´t card you. I said I wanted to go. He got all up in arms and said no, I´m too young—like he wasn´t drinking at our age.” Her smile grew to something a little wicked. “But the idiot had said where it was and I said if he wasn´t going to take us that I was just going to go without him.”

Clarke felt something like interest stir in the back of her mind. That sounded fun, and like a totally stupid idea. It sounded like something she wanted to do. “So he caved?”

“Of course he did. He can´t let his little sister go without him. Who will protect me?” She batted her lashes and Raven snorted.

“Like you can´t handle yourself.” Raven said.

It was completely true. Octavia was known for both starting and finishing fights, messily and victoriously. She´d grown out of it lately, kind of, but when she´d first started school at thirteen after being home-schooled, a year older than the rest of their year, one kid had dared tease her.

The bloody lip had shut him up and after a few black eyes she dealt out the next few months, kids had steered clear of her.

With another grin, Octavia shrugged. “Whatever, it worked. So, Clarke. Tell your mom you´re at mine, Raven will say she´s at yours, I´ll say I´m at Raven´s and really we´ll all be at an actual bar.”

Reckless with alcohol, and reckless without it these days, Clarke nodded. “Deal.”

“Excellent!” Raven straightened and poured more shots. “Shall we ask Finn?”

Clarke opened her mouth to say yes but instead, she said, “No.” and accepted the shot, throwing it back without waiting for the others.

“Okay.” Raven´s voice was small, edged with the concern that never went anywhere these days when it came to Clarke.

Raven and Octavia took their shots and let their night become blurry around the edges.

That Friday night, make-upped by Octavia and dressed to feel and look older, fake ID´s in hand in case necessary, courtesy of Monty, they piled off the bus in a neighbourhood that their parents would probably warn them about. Bellamy pushed the door to the bar open, the music hitting them, a grin on his face.

“I´m going to get my ass kicked if anyone finds out about this.”

“No one will, Bell.” Octavia looked delighted as she walked past him.

Bellamy held the door open as Raven sauntered behind Octavia, Monty and Jasper close behind. He rolled his eyes but when Clarke started to walk past him, asked, “You okay, princess?”

Clarke gave him a nod, the older brother that she´d never had, the action too sharp, her blood already singing a little from the pregaming.

He eyed her, then gave her a nod in return. “Okay.”

Unable to take sympathy, to take empathy, not when it was a night Clarke wanted to be someone else, something else, _anything_ else, she turned and walked into the full bar, brimming with boisterous noise and drunken energy.

 

* * *

 

It took so long, it took even more weeks on top of the few months that had past, but Lexa finally left Aden with someone else. It had nothing to do with the people—it was difficult to admit it, but Lexa trusted Gustus, trusted Anya and Indra and Lincoln with her life. But it was difficult to trust them with Aden´s. When he was too far from her, she felt anxiety crawling up her spine, thick and heady and leaving her feeling like all the air had left the room. Sometimes, if she walked to the other side of the Warehouse, Aden´s eyes flicked up, almost black from his blown pupils as he watched to see where she´d gone.

There was always the feeling that if she let him out of her sights, he wouldn´t be there when she got back. When they´d been in the group home the second time for a night, Lexa had been sent to school and Aden hadn´t been there when she´d come back.

Five and sent to the first open home without being able to say good bye to his only person in the world. Lexa had begged to see him, begged the family she was with next to see him, begged the one after and was always met with silence.

She didn´t like to leave him alone.

But now, after months, Aden trusted the others. He and Anya had clicked, especially, and for the first time when Lexa had been going to leave, hadn´t jumped up immediately to join her. On the sofa, he had sat next to Anya, who was busy trying to beat his top score on his DS and failing badly. He´d hesitated, almost hovered, as if torn between his want to stay with Lexa and his want to stay somewhere that felt a little like his home now.

“Want to stay with me, kid?” Anya had asked, her eyes flicking to Lexa´s, filled with a question.

Aden had swallowed, had stood, had taken a step towards Lexa then paused, looked back. “Can we spar a little?”

Sparring with Aden was all footwork, teaching him to duck. He loved to dance around Lexa as she taught him about signs of someone about to throw a punch, to roll, to be quick. It was slow, and she still lived with her heart in her throat, but he loved it, an addiction, a gleam in his hey that she knew echoed her in when in the midst of a fight.

“Yeah, we can.”

He´d looked back to Lexa, teeth at his lip. “Can I?”

And Lexa had nodded. “Of course.” Her eyes went to Anya. “You sure?”

The nod was sure, but Lexa´s gut wasn´t, and she left after ruffling Aden´s hair, trying not to make a big deal.

The bar was busy that night, Friday´s always were, and Lincoln had pulled her up to pull beers with a wink and a grin that bordered on cheeky. It was better that way, the pace fast as she switched between pulling beers and cleaning glasses; it kept her mind off Aden, off the space he left in her, the way something tugged at her to go back and get him. It was better this way, he wasn´t cooped up in the back office with the sounds of drunken idiots around him. He was somewhere safe, with someone safe. But still.

He wasn´t with _her_.

The crowd was getting thicker, louder.

Lincoln ran a tight place. Troublemakers weren´t remotely tolerated and on nights like this Gustus was there, the two hulking men, gruff looking, generally kept the idiots away. It meant the crowd was usually a fun one, easy going, and Lexa only had to ward of the occasional overly-friendly dude.

A well cut guy stood in front of her, young, his hair flopping in his eyes. He flashed a smile. “Hey.”

“Hey. What´ll it be?”

“Three beers and,” his face fell, “Wait. Girls!” He turned around to the crowd behind him. “What was it?”

And then Octavia was standing in front of her, grinning up at the guy, and panic seized Lexa so strong she had to grip the bar top.

“One vodka coke, one bourbon and coke and a gin and tonic.”

Rolling her eyes, Octavia looked to Lexa. The grin on her face faded and her mouth fell open. Raven pushed up next to her, barely looking at Lexa as she went to say something to Octavia before noticing the look on her face and turning to see what had made her look like that. Raven´s mouth dropped open, too.

“Holy fucking shit! What are the chances?” And then Raven was grinning and tugging someone behind her and Clarke was in front of Lexa, blonde and thinner than before, smudges under her eyes. There was something to her Lexa couldn´t place, but she was still Clarke. Lexa felt something trip over in her stomach, felt herself pause, and the urge to ask Clarke what had taken to stars from her eyes rose up. “Clarke! Check it out, it´s Lexa. Dude.” Raven turned her eyes back to Lexa. “You have no idea how much Clarke was trying to find you.”

Lexa could only stare at Clarke, who blinked back at her, the ocean in her eyes a storm. Then one thought made it through the others: they couldn´t know she was here. If they told people, the school would find out and that crack she´d merrily tripped down would widen until she was found.

Until Aden was found.

“Lexa.” Clarke´s voice was all husk, surprise, and something else Lexa didn´t recognise.

“Clarke.” Lexa loved the way her name rolled in Lexa´s mouth, the way it felt like it clicked there, as if it fell on its way out because it hadn´t wanted to leave the safety of Lexa´s chest.

“I—“ Clarke was staring at her like Lexa had all the answers when Lexa felt like she had nothing to offer up but confusion. “How are you?”

Before Lexa could answer, someone down the bar yelled for service, people pressing in waiting for drinks as Lincoln managed his end, threw her a look, his eyebrows heavy over his brow.

“I´m really sorry, I have to get your order out and serve the next people.”

Octavia and Raven were looking between the two of them, one partly delighted, the other concerned, while the guy who started it all just look confused.

“Three beers, one coke and vodka, one coke and bourbon and one gin and tonic?”

Clarke´s eyes were wide, were glued and her, and she just nodded and watched Lexa the entire time she made the drinks. There was a tremble in Lexa´s fingers and she blamed it on the worry, the worry that this would be the step to being found out. Because it had nothing to do with Clarke and the memory of her burning skin under Lexa´s hands or the urgency to her lips. The way Clarke had offered herself up like the answer to a prayer.

Drinks on the bar the guy and Jasper and Monty from the party grabbing at them, the two boy´s eyes on her, recognition glimmering, Lexa felt sick with the idea that maybe Aden and her were going to have to run.

The girls took one of the remaining drinks each. Clarke was still watching her, her lips parted slightly, the bow of her mouth a question.

“You guys want a tab?”

Clarke still stared at her so Octavia nodded. “Yeah, thanks.”

Lexa set it up and when she looked back over, they´d gone, swallowed by the crowd, probably to one of the tables. It felt like something had opened up and swallowed something Lexa needed. Filling up a row of glasses with beer, the guy who asked for them trying to smile at her, Lexa swallowed past the hollow feeling and wondered what she could say to Clarke to ensure none of them mentioned Lexa. Or maybe it was futile, and Lexa and Aden would have to leave. Or Lexa would have to leave the bar. What if it brought police to the bar, attention they didn´t need?

“What was that?”

Lincoln was next to her, digging into the ice bin and filling some glasses.

“What?” Lexa asked, taking the guys cash with a glare until he got the hint and his friend helped him carry the drinks away.

“That show down.” Lincoln splashed gin into the drinks in front of him and Lexa took someone´s order down the bar by simply watching the gesture to the drinks in front of them and mouth ´four more?´

“There was no show down.”

“You know them.”

Lexa licked her lips and wondered how much you really know someone, how much she could really say she knew Clarke. She didn´t really know the others, their names, the way they all moved in each other’s orbits like they´d done it for a millennia, since the first star exploded and engulfed them all. She knew the drinks they liked, had watched them tell jokes and play games one night at one party.

She knew Clarke only slightly better. Lexa knew she tasted like the fringe of summer, like passion fruit, tart on Lexa´s tongue. She tasted like distraction, like everything Lexa craved but couldn´t touch. She had eyes that watched Lexa through hallways, across rooms. Clarke had felt the desperation in Lexa´s fingers, the scrape of her nails along the skin of her back and offered herself up for me.

“Not really.”

She felt Lincoln´s eyes settle on her for a moment, before he simply said, “Okay.” And took the money held out over the bar with a nod.

Lexa was thinking of Clarke´s lips, when really she should be thinking of how to hide herself from Clarke.

 

* * *

 

They were all drunk, or past tipsy and heading there. Hazy. Slumping over each other, swaying against one another and propping each other up. Laughing at nothing, and telling stories about each other that all of them knew but they loved to embellish every time.

That grief that slicked over Clarke´s insides felt muted, dulled, softened at the edges. Raven was nuzzling her hair and Clarke felt something like a giggle bubble up before it dissolved into nothing, burning out before it could even become sound. All her emotions felt just out of reach and she wished she could forget the watch at her wrist, the look in her mother´s eye, the hole in their house, torn through the fabric of their lives.

“How is Lexa working here?” The words were slurred into Clarke´s ear and she nudged Raven with her shoulder, not roughly, to make her sit up a little. Raven straightened, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright as she looked at Clarke. “Hi, Clarke.”

Clarke loved no one like she loved her friends. “Hi, Raven.”

“So?” Raven asked.

“So…?”

“Why is Lexa here?”

Clarke looked around the table, Octavia leaning against Bellamy and laughing at something Jasper said. She stood up suddenly, barely swaying and announced, “I´ll get the next round.” And there was something in her eye, in the way she searched the bar before she started towards it. For a moment, Clarke thought she was going to interrogate Lexa and she was about to stop her, to stand and chase Octavia down, but she was headed for the hulking guy with eyes like toffee melting on your mouth. Clarke looked back to Raven.

“I don´t know.”

“Go ask her.”

“I don´t think she wants to talk to me…”

There had been something like panic in Lexa´s eyes, the green a wild spark. Not the consuming look when she´d pressed Clarke up against a wall or the soft, needy look drunk in a bathroom at a party. Clarke wanted to press her against the bar and run her nose over her neck, to be the one that plucked _Lexa_ open this time, spilled her secrets, cracked open that serious mask that was always over her face. She wanted to watch her soften with tongues and lips like she had the last time, to see the way her eyes changed, lulled into something else.

“You two seemed pretty chummy at the party. And then there was that, whole, you know…” Raven waved her hand around. “Thing where you freaked ´cause she wasn´t at school.”

Clarke shrugged. “I thought she was a friend.”

“Maybe she still is.”

Clarke wanted to talk about something else and when she saw Octavia sprawled over the bar, looking up under her lashes at the bartender who had gone all soft around the edges, she found it. “How long until Bellamy notices that?”

Raven followed her gaze and snorted. “Yo, Bell. Your sister is _all_ over that bartender.”

Finally, Clarke felt her lips tug up, guilt lashing the sides of it, the feeling that she wasn´t allowed to smile eating at her insides, melting the smile away. Bellamy turned a shade red and stood up. “I think we need shots!” And made for the bar.

Raven´s eyes were back on Clarke, deep and dark and soul searching. “You´re allowed to laugh, Clarke.”

A lump in Clarke´s throat made it hard to swallow, made it feel like she could choke and she gave a one shouldered shrug and reached for her drink. Raven didn´t push it for once and threw her arm around Clarke´s shoulder, pulling her in tight against her side and challenging Monty to a drinking competition.

Clarke liked the bar. The break in the routine of house parties. The fact that she was with her people, no one looking at her like she was about to break, even if she felt she was about to. Her phone vibrated and Clarke saw the screen light up with _Finn_ and she buried it in her pocket, glad that Raven didn´t comment even as she saw everything.

They were there for hours, crowding a table and drinking more than they should. The room didn´t seem to empty around them and Clarke kept watching the bar, watching Lexa move from person to person. Her cheeks were pale. Paler than before, and she had always been pale. Clarke remembered marveling at the pink that had come up on Lexa´s collarbone so easily, the skin like snow beneath her lips to start with. Exhaustion, something deep, had painted its way over Lexa´s features. She worked efficiently, methodically, moving from person to person and often slipping under the bar to bus the tables. She carefully avoided Clarke´s corner, and Clarke stalked her with her eyes, begging her to look over.

Finally, Clarke had enough, and pretended she needed the bathroom but instead headed for Lexa, on the other side of the room with a tray filled with glasses.

“Can I talk to you?”

Lexa´s eyes flew up, tracing Clarke´s face, something soft at the edges before the look slammed away. She looked around the room, made eye contact with the other bartender, then looked back to Clarke.

“Okay.”

Lexa dumped the tray on the bar and led the way out to a door and suddenly they were in an office. The last two hours Clarke had slowed down, had nursed her warming gin and tonic as the others worked through more, but even now she was still foggy, still felt like this was hazy. She wanted to remember Lexa in front of her, to remember what they were about to say. And for all of that, Clarke had no idea why.

For a moment, they stared at each other, Lexa´s arms crossed in front of Clarke, the picture of defense. Clarke wanted to tear that apart, to tug on Lexa´s arms and watch her go pliant underneath her.

“I was worried about you.” Clarke finally said, the words slipping out before she could catch them.

That look again, that soft giving, and Lexa swallowed and broke their eye contact. “You shouldn´t have been.”

“You just…disappeared.”

Lexa looked back to her, her lips pressed tight together. “How much do you know?”

Warmth crept over Clarke´s cheeks. “I…my friend is good with computers. I asked him to find you. I expected to find Facebook or something, some way to see if you were okay. But he found…other stuff.”

A muscle in Lexa´s cheek visibly twitched.

Clarke stepped forward, a meter between them that felt like thousands and Clarke had no idea what tugged at her to close that gap. “Are you…are you okay, where you are?”

Lexa stared at her for a second, as if she was considering everything she could say. “I´m…I´m fine. The group place I´m in is fine. The new school sucks, but it´ll be fine.”

Clarke felt something like relief blossom in her chest, something that filtered into that chasm in her, months old and shaped like her father. “Good. I´m glad.”

She´d imagined worse.

“Clarke.” Lexa was looking at her now, her eyebrows pushed together and a look on her face like she needed Clarke to hear her. “I need you to do something for me.”

Clarke stepped closer, a foot between them, and the air moved as Lexa seemed to sway towards her, even as her feet didn´t move her forward, her eyes dropping to Clarke´s mouth. Green was focussed back towards her and Clarke didn´t understand how someone´s eyes could be that deep, that bright, that filled with every thought. “What?” Clarke´s voice came out like a whisper.

“Don´t mention you saw me. Make sure Octavia and Raven don´t. I…the group home I´m in think I´m somewhere approved on Friday nights. They don´t know I have a job, it wouldn´t be allowed.”

There was a shadow in Lexa´s eye but Clarke didn´t know what it meant and suddenly she felt drunk again, drunk on the way Lexa´s hand had moved to rest on Clarke´s hip, her thumb running over the skin there, drunk on the warmth of the breath that rested between them.

“Okay.” Clarke´s voice was still a whisper and then Lexa tugged on her, that dark look in Lexa´s eyes darkening more, deepening and Clarke stumbled against her, Lexa stepping back to sit against the table, Clarke felling between her legs.

Their lips crashed together, the warmth pulling a moan from Clarke that Lexa swallowed greedily. Fingers were in her hair, nails scratching at Clarke´s scalp and that grief slicking over her insides quelled at the beat of her blood through her veins, the speed of her heart sped up and washing her out. Clarke wouldn´t tell a soul if it meant Lexa would touch her like this, would kiss her like this, would drag Clarke into a place where it didn´t feel like her life had imploded, where there wasn´t something missing so large you couldn´t cover up the hole, somewhere her mother´s eyes didn´t look dead and hurt and full of pain and where Clarke didn´t feel like clawing at her chest to stop the feeling in there.

Clarke clutched Lexa like she was drowning, as if she was all that kept her in that spot and stopped her disappearing. Lexa´s fingers returned the feeling, pulling at Clarke as Lexa needed her closer than was possible. Lips were on her neck, teeth grazing the place Clarke´s pulse pounded and Clarke dropped her head back as a hand fell to the base of her neck, holding her closer as Lexa bit at her skin then soothed her with her tongue. Lexa´s other hand was under her shirt, her fingers digging into the skin along her ribs, patterns traced over her back. Clarke clutched at Lexa, felt warm breath over her chest, over her collar bone. Everything was narrowed down to Lexa, and Clarke felt Lexa buck her against her, her ankles locking behind Clarke´s legs to hold her close. 

“Please.” Clarke had never whimpered like that, never begged, never asked for something in a way that left her so vulnerable.

The lips on her neck paused, Lexa pulled back. “You´re drunk.”

Clarke shook her head, her head whipping, her hands coming up to cup Lexa´s cheeks, staring her straight in the eye. “I´m not.”

Lexa´s lips curled up and Clarke couldn´t remember ever seeing anything to fragile, all her memories of Lexa the desperation in her eye, the bite of her lips, and now this one tiny smile. Something cracked in Clarke´s chest at the sight of it. “You kind of are.”

Sighing, Clarke rested their foreheads together, sharing the air between them. “A little.”

Lexa tilted her head up, her legs wrapping tighter around Clarke, and kissed her again, gentler, as if they had all the time in the world and not as if they might never see each other again.

“It´s okay.”

There was regret tied into those words, but they were also laced with sincerity and Clarke wanted to tug Lexa´s voice out of her, to settle the husk into her ribs and carry that sound.

“Can I have your number?”

Lexa´s entire body tensed under her and her head shook. “I don´t have a phone.”

Clarke had forgotten, heavy with the feeling of Lexa´s body surrounding her and the taste of her against her lips, that she´d never been able to find a phone number for her. A small laugh fell from her chest. “How do you not have a phone?”

The was a huff of air against her cheek where Lexa was running her nose against the soft skin. “Just don´t.”

“Can I see you again?”

Lexa pulled back and cool air swirled everywhere, the urge in Clarke´s fingertips to pull her back. Lexa´s eyes darted over her face, her look unreadable and she shook her head. “It´s impossible.”

Clarke didn´t think she could go months without this again, not when the rage in her ears, the flicker of anger that fed her grief had only really dulled for the first time when Lexa´s fingertips had been leaving scratches on her back and her lips had been pulling out groans. “I can come back here.”

There was something needy in her voice and Clarke hated it a little.

That unreadable look was back on Lexa´s face, the shadow tracing her iris, mingling with the green. Her lips parted as if she was going to say something before she closed them again. Lexa stood up, the motion making Clarke take a step back. “I have to get back out there.”

Without looking back, Lexa walked away, the door closing with a snick behind her and Clarke stood alone in the office.

Lexa hadn´t said yes. But she hadn´t said no, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the kudos and comments. I would love to hear what you all think of this one.


	9. Tattoo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely feedback. It´s so motivating to read :)

The stars were a blanket overhead and Lexa had the urge to dig her fingers into the sky and pull them down around her shoulders. Clarke´s kiss was stamped over her lips and only the taste of her own lies had made Lexa pull away from her and push her away with words she didn´t want to say. Nothing else could have made Lexa leave that room, to leave the taste and smell and feel of Clarke behind her.

When Lexa had come back, the early hours of the morning pressing down on her, Aden had been asleep on a sofa, a blanket over him and an arm hanging off, washed in the orange glow that always filled the warehouse. His hair was plastered to his head and he smelt like child, like sweat, like he used to after a day of running around school. It had made her stomach clench at the memory and she´d smoothed blonde tendrils off his forehead and wondered what the hell she was doing with him; what the hell she was _meant_ to do with him. Anya was passed out on the couch opposite him, eyeliner smudged under her eyes, lips slack with sleep. Vulnerable was never a word Lexa would have chosen for Anya, all hard liens and sharp angles, a silver tongue. But in that moment, she looked the picture of it.

Lexa´s entire body was thrumming. It spread from her chest and down her limbs, settled in her fingertips. It felt a lot like Clarke had set her on fire and Lexa was aching for something she had no words for. Her feet kicked aimlessly, heels beating a rhythm on the wall where she sat on the ledge. It was a warm night, the kind in which it felt like the air was pressing against your skin, lathing it with reassuring heat.

Months and months had passed since she´d taken her brother hands in hers and led him onto the streets, yet still somehow she felt lost with Aden, and still Clarke shadowed her.

Her lips tugged up a little as her gaze traced the lights and buildings spilling out in front of her.

Clarke. With eyes too deep and too accepting, with fingers that clawed with the same _need_ that Lexa´s did. Clarke who opened herself up to Lexa and left herself that way for Lexa to pluck at, to take what she wanted and leave Clarke breathless in her wake.

Lexa coudn´t help but wonder if Clarke knew she left Lexa that way, too. That when Clarke surrounded her, her hair, her skin, the steady, fast pulse under Lexa´s lips, Lexa was left reeling. Clarke invaded. Left Lexa with the feeling of her stomped along Lexa´s insides.

It should have been terrifying, mind numbingly scary.

Instead it left Lexa with her lips curving up as she sipped a beer on the roof and a feeling of wanting more.

Everything she shouldn´t want. Not with Aden. Not after lying to Clarke about her situation. Not when Aden and she felt balanced on a knife´s edge, scared to fall either way and scared that the situation that held them up was going to slice through them and leave them in neat little pieces.

“I can _hear_ you thinking.”

Anya plopped down next to her, inches between their shoulders and legs. She plucked up the bottle in Lexa´s hands and took a long sip before handing it back.

“I´m not thinking.” The words sounded lame even to Lexa´s ears.

“You´re always thinking. Same as your brother.”

Just the mention of Aden left Lexa with a sensation in her throat she couldn´t name. He was sprawled out downstairs, trusting that Lexa knew what they were doing. When really, she had no idea. He had no school, they existed outside of existence of society, on the fringes and never belonging. She wanted Aden to belong.

After her birthday the other month, the idea that the next would be her eighteenth had left her nervous. The reality of their situation, the fact that she was supposed to prove to a court that she was the best person for her brother, legally, after being it for his entire eight years, was feeling less and less achievable.

Yet Lexa was sitting on a roof, watching the stars and finding patterns in them that made her feel mushy inside as she thought of Clarke.

She couldn´t afford to feel mushy, to feel undone.

Impossible, Lexa had said.

And it was.

“Was he good?”

Anya snorted. “He always is. We sparred for an hour and a half.” Anya leant back on her hands. “He´s getting good.”

He was. Too good. He loved the dance, the movement. He ducked and wove and had reflexes that topped all of theirs. “He is.”

“What´s got you thinking so loud?”

Lexa´s tongue ran over her lip and she took another sip of her beer, the fizz of it filling her stomach. “Nothing.”

Anya snorted again. “Yeah. Sure.” She took the beer again and took a long swig, fingers picking at the label when she was done. “You´ve always been a loud thinker.”

Lexa hummed in response, her feet still kicking that rhythm. Once, years ago, lifetimes a go, before her mother had been such a mess, Lexa had been small and squished on her lap at the table, pressed into her chest. Cool hands had run through her hair and a finger tapped her nose. _“My Alexandra, always thinking.”_

That was it. One memory to cling to that didn´t smell like spirits or wasn´t jabbed through with the sting of heroin, nights of being alone and learning to pull the cupboards apart to find something edible.

“You want to talk about it?”

Lexa thought about it. She thought about letting the words fall past her lips, of telling Anya how scared she was about what she was doing, about the fear that had laced her spine and iced her stomach at the sight of kids from her school, the fact that they could tell and she and Aden would have to run. Or telling her about how she didn´t think there was a way to ever crawl out of the crack in the system she´d burrowed into, to get Aden into a word he could join.

Or even just tell her about the girl Lexa was making a habit of kissing, even as she knew she shouldn´t.

But that was something, one thing, that felt like _hers_. Something to nestle in amongst her ribs and thumping heart to keep for herself.

“No.”

Anya nodded, her feet in beat with Lexa´s own.

She didn´t need to say it. To tell Lexa that whenever she wanted to, Anya was around. Twenty minutes later, half asleep and rumpled, Aden emerged with the blanket around his shoulders. Lexa scooted back a little and minutes later he was asleep again, between them, pressed into her side, his toes under Anya´s thighs and Lexa´s fingers in his hair.

Sometimes Lexa thought she should have waited to see where Aden would have ended up in the foster care system. At times, she played with the idea of handing him in. Ensuring his safety, his education.

Most of the time, though, she felt like both of them were where they belonged.

 

* * *

 

Clarke lasted until Wednesday.

She spent Saturday hungover and tracing her fingers over her lips as if she could imprint the feeling of Lexa forever. Her mom got called into a surgery and Clarke made a nest on the modular sofa, one invaded by Octavia and Raven later, before the grief could crawl its way through the hangover and invade her entirely. They watched Netflix and ate too much junk food. All afternoon, they napped on and off, legs entwined and equally as grumpy as each other.

Each time Clarke fell asleep, it was with the memory of how soft the skin of Lexa´s stomach had been under her fingertips and the look in her eye as she´d searched Clarke´s, leaving Clarke feeling as if someone was really seeing her for the first time in months and months,

It was Sunday in the park, all of them and Jasper and Monty sprawled over a blanket, that Clarke had sat up on her elbows.

“O?”

On her stomach, her chin on her hands as she´d been reading a textbook, Octavia squinted at Clarke as she pushed her sunglasses on top of her head. “Yeah?”

Clarke´s lips pulled up a little. “Who was that bartender?”

Everyone looked at Octavia then, faces interested as the hazy memories of their alcohol filled night came back to them. Something on Jasper´s face twitched with jealousy and something on Monty´s did the same, his eyes on Jasper´s

Raven nudged, or more like kicked, Octavia with her foot. “Yeah? Who was he?”

Octavia´s cheek tinged pink, but she was smirking. “Don´t know what you´re talking about.”

Clarke, something light in her chest that she´d been missing for months, couldn’t resist. “You don´t? Hulky guy? Soft eyes? Melted whenever you spoke to him?”

“Oh. _That_ guy.” Octavia flicked her glasses back down, inclining her head back down to look at her book. “That was Lincoln.”

They all stared at her, and she didn´t elaborate.

“And…” Raven kicked her again.

Octavia didn´t look up. “And nothing. I was getting my drunken flirt on towards the end but Bellamy grabbed me and whisked us all home.”

There was something bitter to the words, and Clarke winced. She´d crept out of the office and tried to catch Lexa´s eye at the bar. But Lexa had avoided her even as Clarke could see how swollen the other girl´s lips were, the way she could still see Lexa´s pulse pounding in her neck. Clarke had announced to Bellamy she had wanted to go home and he´d pounced on the chance to separate his sister from the guy at the bar.

“No number?” It was phrased like a question, but Clarke could hear the relief in Jasper´s voice.

“Nope.”

“Speaking of,” Raven said, rolling onto her back and pushing her physics homework far away, the pages ruffling in the slight breeze, “Clarke, did you get Lexa´s?”

And then everyone was looking at her. Grateful for her sunglasses, Clarke shook her head. “No. And, uh, she asked that we don´t mention to anyone that we saw her.”

Now they were all looking at her with more attention.

“Why?” Monty asked.

Clarke gave a one shouldered shrug, her fingers curling the page in her book. “Something about the home she´s in wouldn´t like her working there.”

“Yeah, those places can be shit.” Something brittle was in Raven´s voice. “They monitor everything you do. I´m surprised she can even get away with working there. The one I was in had a really strict curfew. We couldn´t even go out for a walk.” Raven´s face clouded a little and Octavia, eyes still on her book, threw her foot over Raven´s, the one that had just kicked her twice. With a shrug, Raven said, “I won´t breathe a word.”

The rest, like Clarke had known they would, all mumbled their agreement. When Finn joined later, Clarke felt everything inside her freeze over. He sat next to her easily, his hair flopping in his eyes and a quick grin on his face. In moments, he´d dragged out his lap top and was working on something, his foot nudging at Clarke´s. He walked on eggshells around her, never pushed since her dad, just wrapped an arm around her when she´d let him and kiss her back with twice the biting passion when she pulled him to her, trying to forget.

Since Friday night, she´d been thinking that the only time she´d managed to forget was with Lexa sighing into her mouth.

All afternoon, she resisted the urge to shift away, to lie between Octavia and Raven, to put space between them so Clarke didn´t feel like she was pulling apart. A part of her told her to end it with him, but the part still shattered after her father recoiled from the idea of more loss, more pain, of change that left her shaking and wondering at the world.

That night Clarke and her mother sat on opposite ends of the couch staring at the television. The gap between them widened and undulated, filled with her father and his lack of presence. When her mother tried to ask her how Clarke´s day was, Clarke found herself giving one word answers that barely told her anything and her mother quickly gave up. That gap somehow grew wider even as neither of them moved.

Her dad had loved to watch shows about flipping houses. He would commandeer the sofa and remote and commentate the entire thing. Some nights, Clarke would stumble out from a study session and find her parents curled together, her mother rolling her eyes and her father muttering about a kitchen choice, his hand on her thigh and their bodies pressed close. Other nights, he´d pull Clarke into him and her mother would find them hours later, red eyed and half asleep watching old zombie films and she´d join them easily, no question in her movements as she slid into a place where she belonged.

Clarke couldn´t breathe.

Her fingertips were tingling. Her heart was fluttering in her chest and it felt like she wasn´t on the couch, wasn´t really anywhere. Her fingers hooked into the material at a desperate attempt to ground herself, but she couldn´t really _feel_ it.

Without saying goodnight, before her mother could notice that Clarke was having issues remembering how to breathe, she got up and left her mother to that gap, that man shaped hole, and crawled into bed, hyperventilating into her pillow and unable to even cry.

School was a blur and Clarke found her teachers left her alone. They had for months, even with her unexplained missed classes. But even though she was missing less, they still left her to stare out the window and disappear into her head. Something in her wondered how long until they´d stop letting that pass.

In art, she participated. She slashed colour and poured herself into images even she couldn´t make sense off. She filled canvases and made a portfolio dedicated to loss, reds and blacks and blues so deep they were almost obsidian. Her teacher’s eyes would run over them with a look too searching and praise on her lips, even as she appeared troubled. On Tuesday, Clarke painted without thinking, greens and blacks and a golden glow. Eyes stared back at her, eyebrows pressed together, the look right there that had been following Clarke since she´d first caught them near some lockers. Since she´d met them at a party. Since she´d been pulled back behind some bleachers and seen a desperation. Since in a bar, and Lexa had looked at her as if she wanted to be her undoing.

On Wednesday, she gave in.

It was six o´clock and the silence was pressing in. Her mother was working late and twilight was seeping in through the windows. Clarke was trying to study, was trying to get herself back on track and leave behind the mess she´d been the last few months but her leg wouldn´t stop bouncing and her father´s watch was ticking at her wrist.

Her mother had bought him that watch. Years and years ago. Something about replacing another broken watch that came before it, one that when they mentioned it her parents got red faced and their gazes slid away only to slide back again. They´d get gross and coy and her father would eventually laugh, the sound almost booming and Clarke wanted to hear it again.

The ease of it.

But instead all she heard was nothing.

Then, she was grabbing her bag, checking she had her keys and phone and was out the door. It only took one message and Raven and Octavia met her thirty minutes later at the bus stop.

“On a Wednesday?” Raven asked.

Clarke gave a nod. “Why not?”

“I, for one, think this is a great idea.”

“Of course you do, O, you can see your man cake.” Raven rolled her eyes before looking back at Clarke. The playful look fell away to something deeper. “You okay?”

“Mhm.”

The bus trip felt like it took an age and Octavia slipped out a hipflask the three passed between themselves on the backseat. Clarke only took two sips, just wanted to burn the nerves away and then remembered the way Lexa´s lips had stilled on her neck as she´d asked, “Are you drunk?”

And then she´d pulled away.

They got off the bus, feeling slightly less secure in that neighbourhood than when they´d been quite drunk and surrounded by three guys, slipping into the bar quickly.

The difference in atmosphere was staggering. The odd patron was scattered around, the music quieter, the entire vibe less charged and more chill. They piled onto stools at one end of the bar and Lincoln walked over to them, polishing a glass and his eyes going soft as he watched Octavia.

Octavia beamed at him and that soft look melted even further and Clarke felt something not quite like envy at the sight of it. When he smiled, he made her think of coffee, warm and bathing over your tongue.

“Octavia.”

“Lincoln.” Octavia leant an elbow on the bar and gestured to Raven and Clarke. “Do you remember my friends? Raven and Clarke.”

Lincoln´s eyes swept over them, hovering over Clarke a moment later and she felt her cheeks heat as she wondered if he knew. He settled on Raven. “You´re the one who did three tequilas in one go.”

Raven grimaced. “Don´t remind me.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.” And his eyes were back on Octavia. “I didn´t think I´d see you here again so soon.”

And Clarke didn´t hear her answer because she heard a door open and close quickly and she turned a little to see Lexa walking in from the office before she stopped dead, staring at Clarke, her face completely unreadable.

Voices murmured next to her. Clarke didn´t hear any of it.

Lexa´s hair was damp and braided almost intricately. It was pulled back from her face and left her eyes in full view, vividly green as they stared at Clarke, her eyebrows furrowed in the manner Clarke had so desperately tried to capture on paper.

No one looked at Clarke like that.

Consuming. Knowing.

And then Lexa was moving again, sliding under the bar to stand next to Lincoln, her hands behind her back.

Clarke blinked and tried to remember to not looks enraptured. A beer was somehow in front of her and Raven´s was already in her hand and Octavia was taking a sip. Lexa looked between all them.

“Hello, Raven. Octavia.” Her eyes caught Clarke´s and Clarke felt like something permanent shifted inside of her. “Hello, Clarke.”

Her name, like Lexa was trying to hold the syllables in her mouth for longer, the clack of the _K_ always in time with her heart beat.

“Hi, Lexa.”

“Lexa!” Raven grinned. “Hi. Sorry about the drunkenness the other night. You know how it is.”

Lexa smiled slightly, her lips quirking. “No problem. If you ask me, you were far drunker at that party.”

Octavia put her beer down and leant on the bar, her eyes always darting to Lincoln even as she spoke to Lexa. “I think _everyone_ was drunker at that party.”

Lexa´s eyes flicked to Clarke´s before they landed back on Octavia. Her words left Clarke with pink cheeks. “I enjoyed myself.”

Somehow, later, Clarke was at one end of the bar on a stool while Lexa was unloading trays of glasses, Octavia and Raven with Lincoln at the other end. Clarke still nursed the same beer, the liquid warm and a little stale.

Clarke´s arm sprawled over the bar top, her head propped up on her hand. She watched Lexa, the way she moved, steadily and sure. She was still paler, something still etched in her eyes that tugged at Clarke. Tugged her closer, left her fingers itching to draw or pull Lexa to her.

“Do you like working here?” It was an inane question, but Clarke wanted to know. She wanted to know everything, if she was honest. She wanted to sit and pluck Lexa apart until she knew her inside out.

Lexa nodded, wiping water marks off one of the glasses. “I do.” Clarke just blinked at her so Lexa kept going. “It´s relaxing, and easy. It´s work.”

“How is it you get to work? From what I heard, it´s hard to have a job when you´re in one of those homes?”

Something faltered in Lexa´s movements, something barely noticeable and if Clarke wasn´t watching her so intently, she wouldn´t have noticed. Lexa´s eyes stayed on her work.

“It is. I guess I´m lucky.”

“How´s school?”

Clarke wanted to know everything, but she also didn´t want to be asking questions that felt ridiculous. There was something there, a barrier, sprung between them both that tasted like unshared history. Clarke didn´t know how to scramble at it, how to tug it down so it lay at their feet and could be easily crossed.

“It´s fine.”

Something felt hollow. “Look, if you don’t want to talk…”

Lexa´s eyes flew up and her hand landed on Clarke´s, tugging at her to stop her in her half attempt to stand. “No, it´s not that. I´m sorry.” Lexa met her eye then, studied her for a moment. “What´s happened to you, Clarke?”

That barrier was suddenly shattered, and Clarke was left breathless at the lack of warning. She blinked at Lexa and swallowed, unable to look away. “What do you mean?” Her voice cracked, and Clarke resented it.

Lexa pushed a tray aside and leant on the bar, their faces a foot apart. She cocked her head, her eyes all over Clarke´s face before settling back on her eyes. That look was back, the one that left Clarke with need at the back of her throat.

“What´s happened to you, Clarke?”  Lexa repeated, her voice low and like gravel. “Something in you has changed.”

Clarke felt fingers of panic at her back, felt the urge to run away from someone who could see her so clearly. There was a lump in her throat so big Clarke didn´t know how she could breath, or even swallow as heavily as she did. She looked down the end of the bar, her friends completely distracted, and back to Lexa. She shook her head once, her lips pressed together.

Clarke stood. “Come with me?”

She started to walk to the office that they had gone to last time but fingers grabbed at her hand. “Not there.” Lexa said. “Someone´s in there.”

And Lexa tugged her towards another room, a storage room with crates and pallets and cartons. Once inside, Clarke closed the door and leant against it, her heart hammering in her chest. Lexa stood in front of her, an inch of space between them and watched as tears brimmed in Clarke´s eyes. Angrily, Clarke swiped at them with both hands and everything in her stilled when Lexa brought her hands up, her fingers wrapped around Clarke´s wrists and her thumbs brushing gently over the wetness of her cheeks.

“What happened, Clarke?” Her words were a whisper over Clarke´s skin. Her breath was warm and sweet and Clarke closed her eyes, dropping her head back on the door behind her.

Clarke shook her head again. The words always hurt to say, and she didn´t know _how_ to tell Lexa. How to shape the sounds that formed the story of the gaping black space her father had left. Her mother´s empty eyes and sad sighs. Clarke´s revulsion, misdirected and toxic, that was bubbling in her stomach at her mother. Of the loneliness that swelled in her chest at night, when she used to hear the sound of her father tiptoeing out for water. Of the utter _lost_ feeling when she thought of the next year, the next two, of making a decision about her life when she had no idea what she wanted, of the way she felt like something in her had twisted and bent.

She had no words, but she did know something that helped, something she wanted.

She had no words, but neither did Lexa, with her evasive answers and the way she disappeared in and out of Clarke´s life, yet watched Clarke like she was the only thing holding her to this one.

So Clarke wrapped her fingers in Lexa´s hair, her nails scraping at her scalp and pulled Lexa with a gasp against her. Their bodies melded as their lips touched, plying and soft and somehow desperate all together. Thighs slid between each other and Clarke sighed into Lexa at the touch, at the flex of Lexa´s leg between her own. It was a kiss that Clarke was always craving, something in the back of her mind always waiting to occur. Their mouths moved, lips tugging and teeth grazed Clarke´s bottom lip, her hips jerking at the sensation.

Lexa pulled back, just barely, her forehead pressing to Clarke´s even as Clarke´s hand fell to grab at her shirt, to fist the material in her hand as if terrified Lexa was about to leave.

“I meant it, Clarke. The other night.” Lexa´s lips were mere millimetres away and Clarke opened her eyes to have her vision invaded by green, a well of something Clarke would happily fall into if it always soothed the ache in her chest like this. “This is impossible.”

Impossible was such a big word, one Clarke hated. And at that moment, all she could think was, “What isn´t impossible, Lexa?”

And she tugged, then, with a fistful of Lexa´s shirt and Lexa melted into her, her tongue hot on Clarke´s, the brush of it almost too much. As fingers slid under her shirt, as Lexa´s palm slid over her belly, the skin jumping at the touch, Clarke couldn´t feel that gaping hole in her chest, she didn´t feel like she was standing and choking and utterly lost.

She felt like she was somewhere she was meant to be.

Teeth grazed against her neck, her collarbone and Lexa´s fingers flicked at the buttons of Clarke´s shirt, tugging it open. Her lips left a bruise against the swell of Clarke´s breast, the feel of it tattooing itself along her nerves.

When Lexa´s hand, clumsy and fast and perfect, slid into her pants Clarke came undone with a smile on her lips, her teeth grazing Lexa´s neck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo...random poll. Raven and Anya? Raven and Abby (not yet, obvs, as she´s seventeen and Abby´s husband just died)? Raven and no one? Raven and other character? Don´t care? Everyone surviving the angst?


	10. Facts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, you guys were enthusiastic in your comments. Thanks!

Half of Lexa was walking home as if she was walking through the sky, footsteps light and like gravity had been stripped away, leaving her floating. She felt dizzy with Clarke´s touches, dizzy with the smell of her, with the memory of her throat beneath Lexa´s lips and the pounding of her pulse against her tongue.

The other was firmly rooted to the ground, feet dragged down by lies and deceit. Clarke had no idea about the life Lexa was living, drowning in struggle while trying to make it all seem normal so Aden didn´t fall apart next to her. Clarke had no idea, not really, no matter what she´d read when her friend had done something with the internet, no idea of the ins and outs, the street beneath Lexa´s feet, the brother who was pressed against her side, his DS clutched in his hand. The only thing he really owned, and clung to.

Lexa had dropped lies, cloaked herself in them, and Clarke didn´t even know Aden existed. She thought Lexa was safely inside the system, at school and in a house with locks and safety each night. With food she didn´t scrounge for, or send her eight year old brother to scrounge for.

Words that weren´t lies had built on her tongue, but Clarke had looked so shattered. Something about Clarke´s eyes, before bright and lit with something untouchable, were dimmed and cracked and broken. Something about her looked battered. When Lexa had clung to her at school, sheltered by bleachers, Clarke had been pliant and warm and receiving. Her eyes had searched Lexa, looked for whatever she needed and offered it up. She still did that.

But now she was searching for something of her own, too. Desperation sat in Clarke´s fingers, absent before, and tugged at Lexa to ease it. When Clarke had shaken against her, had come apart, Lexa´s name painting her lips as they curved up in the first smile Lexa had seen on her that night, Lexa hadn´t been able to take her eyes off of her.

That broken thing, for just a second, had looked like what it had before.

“Lexa.”

Aden´s voice was low. He´d been quiet all night. In the office, he´d read and played his DS and Lexa had hinted to Clarke she had to work. Her and her friends had left not long after, Clarke asking when they could see each other again. Lexa had said it was impossible, and felt her lips curve up, a mirror of Clarke´s at the word.

Lexa needed Clarke away, but instead kept jerking her closer.

She wanted to know her.

“Yeah, Aden?”

“Do you miss Mom?”

That word punched low in her stomach, snapped something buried deep. Lexa swallowed heavily, and wondered if the motion could drown out that sensation caused by such simple three letters. She was lost at his question, floundering, and he was staring ahead adamantly as they walked the darkened streets, as if knowing he shouldn´t have asked it. As if he´d been building up to it forever.

“I…” Lexa´s breath was caught in her chest, hanging there, leaving her feeling overinflated and unsure. “Sometimes.”

It was the most truthful thing she could offer. If Lexa could, she didn´t think of her mother, or she found her fingers would twitch with an anger so deep, one that had been settled so low in her stomach for so long she thought it was stitched into her, absorbed, a part of her. Layered just under it, tinier and smothered, was hurt and shame and a need all directed at the woman that left Lexa abandoned again and again and again.

She licked her lips, and tried to remember Aden was eight, his view of their mother skewed. “Do you?”

They barely talked of her, of their life _before,_ as if doing so would bring forth something neither of them knew how to deal with.

He was silent for a moment, their footsteps bouncing off stone walls and overly loud in the hush of late night.

“Sometimes.” She thought that was it, his silence stretching what felt like forever. “Sometimes more than sometimes.”

She wished he had left it at that, hadn´t said that final sentence, his voice cracking over the final syllable, his voice choked and struggling over emotions too big for him.

There was a rushing sound in Lexa´s ears and that anger that bubbled so deeply flared, rose in her chest, that her mother failed Aden so badly in both life and death. They stopped on the street, lathed in shadows that Lexa knew they needed to get past, that could hide people and things she always tried to keep out of Aden´s sight. She dropped to a knee, the cement biting painfully into her skin through her jeans.

The sight of him broke her heart. His face was flushed, his eyes glittering and hard as diamonds. They stared at each other, his lower lip quivering just slightly, his lips pursed together as if he was doing everything he could to stop that betraying tremble.

“That´s okay, Aden.”

He shook his head, just once.

“It is. You´re allowed to miss her.”

He leant forward then, his hands on her shoulders and his forehead against her own. His eyes screwed shut and his breath shuddered. “Okay.” He whispered. “Sometimes, I miss school. And the house. I miss…”

He didn´t have words for what he missed, and Lexa just let the ones he had hang between them.

They were there for minutes, hearts heavy, Lexa wishing she could take everything he was feeling and mash it inside herself. They breathed in sync and she let his fingers bruise her shoulders.

When they got back to the warehouse, Lincoln was still at the bar, cleaning after having told Lexa to get Aden home. He´d smiled, shy and slow, when she´d asked if he was seeing Octavia again.

Gustus was on a sofa, Anya across from him, cards in their hands and between them. Her face was slashed with a frown. Aden and Lexa paused and looked at each other, then back at the pair. Aden´s hand fell to the dog that came to slump against his legs, almost knocking him over with his bulk.

“What´s going on?” Lexa asked.

Anya´s jaw clenched tight, the muscle in her neck popping. “He´s cheating.”

Lexa almost snorted. Almost. Gustus didn´t cheat.

“She´s losing and taking it badly.” Gustus picked up a card from the pile, a grin splitting his face. “But, Anya, it looks like I win again.” He dropped his cards down, face up. “Gin.”

For a second, Lexa thought Anya was going to throw her cards at him. That muscle ticked again. But then her shoulders relaxed and she dropped her cards down, scattering them on top of his. “I need a drink.”

Gustus chuckled, a rumble in his chest. He procured a bottle of whisky and poured them out a glass each. The odour reached Lexa and Aden where they stood, and they both wrinkled their noses at the cheap, spirit smell. It was sharp, the smell burning her nose.

“Want to spar?” Lexa had an itch in her feet, one that had been soothed by Clarke until Clarke had tried to slip her hand in Lexa´s pants and Lexa had grabbed it, mumbling excuses about how she had to get back to work or she´d lose her job.

It felt wrong, somehow, with the lies scattered between them. With Clarke´s broken look Lexa couldn´t place, and the fact that they had barely had a conversation.

Anya straightened in her chair, knocking back the drink in one hit. Something in her eye glinted and she nodded. “Let´s go.”

“Can I, too?”

Aden looked up at her, now cross-legged on the floor, his fingers buried in the fur of the dog that sometimes looked a little like a wolf.

Lexa hesitated and Gustus stood up. “I think,” he said, looking from the gleam in Anya´s eye to the way Lexa was rocking from foot to foot, “you and I should just watch this one.”

When Aden nodded, Lexa lead the way into the sparring room, slipping her shoes off and standing on the old mat in the centre. Anya did the same and they faced each other, eyeing each other for a moment.

Anya could be wild, all intuition and hard fists in a fight. She was fast, and she fought like she was possessed, with no tactics. It worked for her. No one ever saw her coming.

But Lexa knew her style.

Against the wall, Gustus stood next to Aden, his hand heavy on his shoulder, dwarfing it, the dog between them. Lexa knew the warmth of that hand, how it could spread throughout your chest and make everything ease from the feel of it.

“Let´s go.”

And that was all Anya said before dropped and swiped her leg out in a clean arc, trying to trip Lexa onto her ass. It was pure reflexes that saved her, Lexa jumping over the leg and bouncing back. Anya stood and Lexa swung forward, a kick aimed for her knee.

They bounced between each other for what felt like forever. Ducking and weaving, the odd glancing blow landing. They fought with open hands and kicks, certain areas out of bounds unless you knew they´d dodge it. The rules were embedded in their brain.

Breathing hard, they wore each other down until finally, Lexa managed to swipe a foot out from Anya, her back hitting the mat with a slap. With a grunt, Anya´s hand shot out, wrapped around Lexa´s ankle and she went down next to her. They both lay, breathing hard.

And still that itch was in Lexa´s skin.

So they sparred with Aden, the two of them, Gustus offering words of advice in a low, even tone. With Aden between them, they threw kicks and swung out at him, slower than they had with each other, but not by much. He was fast, he´d always been fast, but after months of this, his reflexes were good. He danced away from a kick from Anya and then Lexa´s swing he barred with his hand and stepped into her space, bringing the heel of his hand to her solar plexus and stopping just before it landed.

He stared up at her, chest heaving for air, and Lexa stared at him, eyes wide with surprise. Finally, she smiled.

“You´re getting good.”

The smile he gave her was huge, and for the next hour Lexa felt the sting of his hand where it had bounce away her forearm and the whistle of air as he almost winded her.

An hour later, Lexa slid Aden´s head off her thigh on the sofa and made sure the blanket covered him completely. He was heavy in sleep, floppy, his limbs askew and breaths heavy. Arti was sleeping on the roof again, the nights warm enough and his need for space pulling him to the open sky. Anya had gone to bed, but Gustus sat on another sofa, a book in his hand. She sat next to him, a gap between them, and he left her for a moment. She watched Aden, his chest moving up and down, and wished she could give him more than a life that left him missing that had left them both with scars crisscrossing their hearts.

She wanted to give him everything, but was starting to wonder if she might end up giving him nothing.

And Clarke. Lexa didn´t have time for whatever she was doing with Clarke. But those eyes stared at her and begged her to help and Lexa couldn´t say no.

Gustus´ arm, heavy and warm, came over her shoulder and tugged her into his side, his eyes never leaving his book.

“I can hear you thinking.”

Stiff for a minute, Lexa slowly relaxed into his side, her head coming down on his shoulder. His dog pulled himself up onto Aden´s feet and Gustus rest his hand atop her head.

Lexa fell asleep remembering the sound of Clarke´s sigh and the taste of her lips.

 

* * *

 

Impossible.

The word was tattooed across Clarke´s mind, over her chest and down her fingers.

Impossible.

She wanted to ask why, had wanted to know why _impossible_. It was such a big word, one with a meaning that was irrefutable. But how could Lexa use that word, then let Clarke tug her forward and lose herself in their heat.

It was so different to Finn. In many ways not better, not worse, not anything like that.

It was about Lexa, and the way her fingers grabbed at Clarke like she was the last thing keeping Lexa to the Earth, the last thing tethering her to a world that was pushing her away.  It was about how Clarke had felt like the world was clambering in her ears since her mother had said the words that blew them apart when all they had left were each other, and that the only time it had truly dimmed to nothing was when Lexa had smiled, had pressed a kiss to Clarke´s lips. Clarke hadn´t meant to let it go so far, hadn´t meant to beg for Lexa to do exactly that when her hand had slipped inside her jeans. Hadn´t meant to take her betrayal against Finn so far (though part of her thought that bit was the least of the betrayal, compared to the way Lexa wove in Clarke´s skin, and the fact that Clarke had let her). But her mind craved the silence Lexa brought and instead of ending it she´d plead for more.

Lexa was everything Clarke wanted to know and nothing she actually did.

There was a secret in the bow of her mouth, Clarke could tell. There was something she wasn´t telling her, something more to this _impossible_ than simply going to a different school now.

But Clarke couldn´t fault Lexa and her secrets, now when Clarke had words she kept clamped down and didn´t say, even as Lexa asked her _what´s happened to you_. It ached. It ached to know that something had changed so drastically within her it was visible to someone who kissed Clarke so hard she wanted to break but barely said a word. It ached, yet at the same time, it was vindicating, to know that she had been truly altered, that this feeling in her chest, this hollowness, was not something she´d invented.

Clarke spent days bouncing between grief and wanting to see Lexa again. Some moments when she was thinking of Lexa and her complicated eyes, the well of green that threatened to drown, the tug of her hands, a glow settled somewhere in the pit of her stomach, warm and almost like comfort. Guilt would tear up her spine and split her in two, at feeling something like that when her father was gone and her mother was wallowing in loneliness in their too-big house, grief clawing at her eyes and Clarke pushing her further and further away.

On Friday night, Clarke rejected a call from Finn and, sitting at her desk, started to type out a text to Octavia and Raven to see if they wanted to go back to the bar.

Thankfully, Octavia had been too wrapped up in Lincoln to notice Clarke had come out flushed faced and with swollen lips, Lexa with a coy look to her eye even as she bit down her own smile. Raven had side-eyed her, but left her alone.

Before she hit send, she paused.

This wasn´t fair. She´d done it for months and months, kissing Lexa and excusing it away with alcohol and naivety and being unsure and then anguish. So instead she sent another text and waited.

He didn´t take long.

Her mother let him up and she shut the door when she left, never one for invading Clarke´s privacy or to give long winded explanations about _boys_. They´d had a talk, a few years ago, about choices and responsibility and being ready, and that had been that.

Finn grinned, easily, like he always did and it faltered a little at the struggling one she returned. He stood in the centre of her room and she stood too, feeling ridiculous sitting at her desk while he stood, looking like he didn´t know what to do with his hands. He´d lost the way he relaxed in her presence, the way he would pull her against him, comfortable and content. They used to stretch over her bed like cats, relishing the contact of their skin and the way they wound their legs together.

“I think we need to break up.”

She said it before she couldn´t, and hated how her voice shook. And not out of fear of hurting _him,_ but out of fear of hurting herself. Everything hurt so much of the time and she hadn´t wanted _this_ to, as well.

His face fell, she could see it happening. Saw the pain lance into his eyes in the way they dimmed, dropped to the floor. He looked, for a minute, like he was going to step forward, to try to convince her, and then his face shuttered, and she had no idea what he was thinking anymore.

“Why?”

She groped for an answer, desperate to pull something in to make him feel better, even as she felt her own panic rising at the thought of losing someone else. “We…I´m not happy.”

He swallowed then, so heavily she could see his throat bob. “But maybe that´s normal, after your da…after everything. Maybe you need more time?”

The hopeful look was worse than the shuttered one. She shook her head and stepped back, her hand hooking over her elbow, arm across her stomach like it could shield her. “No.”

 “But Clarke. I—I love you.”

He said it like it was everything, like that was all that mattered. She wanted to tell him she loved him, too, because once upon a time she had. But the words died before they even grew. “I´m sorry, Finn.”

He stood for a moment, his jaw clenching, eyes red and swimming with tears before he turned and walked out, the door shutting a little too loudly behind him.

She waited ten minutes, then followed him out, calling over her shoulder to her mother, small and alone on the couch, “I´m going to Raven´s!”

She felt guilty for enjoying Lexa, felt guilty she wasn´t thinking of her dad all the time, felt guilty she hurt Finn and guilty because her mother had simply nodded like she´d expected it, reaching for the bottle of wine on the coffee table.

It wasn´t Raven´s she went to, she lived a little out of the way, but Octavia´s, where Raven was anyway. The three of them sprawled over the couch and Clarke told them about Finn and they looked from each other and back to her.

“Is this about Lexa?” Octavia asked.

“No.”

Raven´s eyebrows raised, but she didn´t say anything. She´d been friends with Finn before all of them, had known him before she´d ended up in the system and when she had ended up in the same school as him, he´d integrated her into their group. They were like brother and sister, and Clarke didn´t want Raven to feel torn between the two.

“It…it wasn´t completely about Lexa.”

Raven´s eyebrows stayed up. Clarke swallowed and looked away. “Finn was…comfortable.”

Octavia winced on his behalf and Clarke couldn´t blame her. Not knowing what to do, Clarke fell back against the couch, hand over her eye and a lump too large to swallow past in her throat. Within moments, Octavia was on one side of her and Raven on the other, the three pressed together and breathing the same air.

“Are you okay?” Octavia asked.

Hand still over her eyes, Clarke nodded. But halfway through, she shook her head, tears spilling past her lids. Arms wrapped around her and Raven´s chin rested on the top of her head.

“Wanna marathon _Friends_?”

Clarke nodded against someone´s chest and they spent the night like that, sprawled over each other, with ice-cream and later, some vodka.

Clarke tried to remember to breathe.

On Saturday, they stepped into the bar, the room crowded but nothing like the week before.

Monty looked around then his eyes lit up like they always did when he realized something. “College people are on exams.”

At the bar, Lincoln watched them approach, smiling at Octavia like he´d been waiting for her to come. She had been on her phone a lot all day, with an unfamiliar smile on her face. She didn´t want to, but Clarke found herself scanning the bar for Lexa. Her heart hammered harder against her ribs when she caught sight of her near the back, clearing glasses and wiping a table for a waiting group. Lexa looked up and caught her eye and her hammering heart felt like it stopped. Clarke gave a wave, a smile on her lips and, not for the first time, wished Lexa hadn´t had to rush back to work the other night.

Lexa gave a small wave back, her eyes deep and searching Clarke´s face before turning back to the table.

Raven elbowed her and Clarke jumped. “What?”

The grin on Raven´s face could be called ´shit eating´. “Jasper asked what you wanted to drink?”

“Oh, a beer, thanks, Lincoln.” She caught Lincoln´s eye and he gave a nod. Raven was still grinning. “What?”

“Could you be any more obvious?”

“I don´t know what you mean.”

“Sure, Jan.”

Clarke´s brow furrowed. “What?”

“The Brady Bunch? That meme on Tumblr?”

“Did you just speak words?”

Sighing, Raven shook her head. “We need to get you and your art on Tumblr.”

“Sure, Jan.”

“No. Not how you use it.”

Clarke accepted the beer that Monty handed back to her and took a sip. “Sure, Jan?”

Groaning, Raven took her own drink. “No!”

Clarke shot her a small grin and something around Raven´s eyes softened. “What?”

Raven shook her head. “Nothing.”

She could see the words, though, building in Raven´s eyes. The _I missed you_. The words that would make things serious and maybe pull the smile from Clarke´s face. Clarke just leant her shoulder against Raven´s for a second and then eyed Jasper eyeing Octavia chatting to Lincoln.

“How´s that going to go?” Clarke asked.

“Hopefully well. Probably not so for Jasper, though.”

Clarke eyes flashed to Monty. “Or Monty.”

“True.”

“Hello, Clarke.”

Clarke´s eyes closed for a moment and when they opened and she turned slightly, Lexa was behind the bar.

“Hi.” Clarke´s voice went a little breathy. The last time they´d seen each other, Lexa´s hands had been in her pants and Clarke had felt like some of her pieces were being put back together.

“Hi, Raven, everyone.”

The group raised their glasses at her and pulled up stools, the slightly less full bar meaning there was space to take up there.

Lexa and Lincoln floated in and out of their group, serving others and Lexa picking up glasses. Clarke tried to focus on her friends, on the chat. She watched Octavia and Lincoln speak in low tones across the bar, watched the way their eyes softened and their smiles grew with each other. She watched Monty distract Jasper with a story about Raven´s latest explosion in Chem class, and listened to Raven interject with her defence. Which was more an embellishment on the size of the fire she´d caused. She watched it all, but barely paid attention, her eyes going from all of them to Lexa. There was something so different to when she´d first seen her. Something harder, that Clarke had noticed that first night at the bar. Lexa had always been angles and maturity, but now, there was something more profound, and she supposed she shouldn´t be surprised. After her father´s death, it seemed Clarke was stamped with the effects of it, and Lexa had lost her mother, had been in and out of foster care.

But still, there was something. Like the first time they kissed and Clarke had wanted to know everything, she wanted to fall into Lexa now and pry out her secrets one by one, uncover what lay beneath her skin.

When their eyes caught across the bar, Clarke felt something in her jump, tick over, and she wished she could meet her somewhere Lexa wasn´t working. Wished she could drag her out of this bar, out of that group home and somewhere none of their dead parents or cloudy pasts could touch them.

Later, the others were several beers in, Jasper and Monty getting louder and Raven leaning heavily on Octavia as she flirted with Lincoln. The same beer, lukewarm, was in Clarke´s hand. Behind the bar, Lexa glanced at Clarke and whispered something to Lincoln. After he looked around the room, Lincoln gave a nod, and Lexa ducked under the bar and was next to her. She was close enough to touch and Clarke looked up at from the stool, Lexa´s eyes heavy lidded.

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Clarke smiled a little.

“Would you like to have a drink out back?”

Mouth dry, Clarke nodded. She slid of her chair and suddenly Lexa was leaning across her front, reaching for two drinks Lincoln was holding out. She handed one to Clarke. “Gin and tonic, right?”

Clarke nodded and Lexa took a sip of her own drink.

Then her eyes widened slightly and she was looking past Clarke. When Clarke turned, she saw someone sidling up to their group, all dark leather jacket, dark eyeliner and, also, ridiculously hot.

“Anya?”

The woman focussed on Lexa. “Hey.”

“Where´s—“ Lexa looked at Clarke then back at Anya, something about the set of her jaw making Clarke think she as nervous.

“With Gustus.”

The tension that had rolled over Lexa´s shoulders seeped out. She gave a nod. “Okay.”

“Anya!” Lincoln leant over the bar and held his hand out, which she clasped as they both leant into it a little. “I didn´t know you´d be in tonight.”

“Had some stuff to do.” Her eyes swept over the group and settled on Clarke, her proximity to Lexa gaining her attention. “Who´re these people?”

“This is Clarke.” Clarke gave a wave and Anya just stared her down. “Octavia, Raven, Monty and Jasper.”

Anya had stopped following the introductions at Raven, her head cocked as she stared at her. Still leaning against Octavia, Raven was staring straight back, her jaw clenched.

“Oh, I know Raven.” There was a smile growing on her lips, but nothing about it seemed friendly.

Clarke blinked. She did? There was something in how they were staring at each other. Raven was normally open, a little rough around the edges but she smiled easily. Clarke had been drawn to her for the way she tended to put people at ease. Now, the two were just staring at each other.

“You do?” Clarke asked. She looked at Lexa, but she was looking from one to other.

“We were in a foster home together.” Raven finally spoke.

Neither elaborated anymore and everyone just stared at them, the music and other bar noise behind them all, Lexa´s shoulder warm against Clarke´s side.

“Well, that´s cool, a link between you all.”

The looks that got shot Jasper´s way had him looking like he was about to sink into the floor.

Lincoln cleared his throat. “Drink, Anya?”

At her nod, Octavia started up a conversation with Monty and Raven glowered but turned to listen. Clarke looked to Lexa.

“Drink?”

Lexa led the way and Clarke followed. The door closing behind them sealed off most of the noise from the bar, and the silence fell like a brick.

Instead of sitting on the chairs, Lexa flopped onto the cot that was in the corner, leaning against the wall with her legs kicked over the side, so Clarke sat next to her, their sides barely touching and feet next to each other on the floor.

Clarke realised, then, that they had barely had a conversation. It didn´t stop her wanting to turn her head, though, and brush her lips across Lexa´s neck. To wrap her fingers in her hair and breathe her in, to kiss her lips and feel the wetness of her tongue against her own.

Clearing her throat, Clarke tried to think of something else. “You´re friend Anya seems…nice.”

“No, she doesn´t.”

Clarke wasn´t expecting that answer, nor the small smile that accompanied it.

“She doesn´t seem _nice_ , Clarke.”

Clarke chuckled a little, the sound still not sitting right in her ears. “No, okay, she doesn´t. But I´m sure she is.”

“She´s my best friend.”

“Did you know she knew Raven?”

Lexa shook her head, something in her eye Clarke didn´t know how to read. “No.”

“It´s a small world.”

Lexa turned her head then, looking at her properly, her head cocked. The green of her eyes was something Clarke could get lost in forever. “It is.” Lexa leant her head against the wall, her eyes not leaving Clarke´s. “Tell me something, Clarke.”

Clarke waited, and when Lexa said nothing else, she asked, “What?”

“No, tell me _something_. Anything.”

Lexa blinked at her, so sincere something caught in Clarke´s chest and held. She leant forward and put her drink on the floor, if only to get a break from that sensation, and from the need she had to press her lips to Lexa´s.

“Um.” Clarke leant back against the wall, her head tilted to look at Lexa´s. It didn´t help, their faces were inches apart. “I like pizza.”

Lexa rolled her eyes. “Fine. To be fair, I didn´t know that.”

Clarke smiled in spite of herself. “Tell me something.”

“I don´t like pizza.”

“No!” Clarke´s eyes widened. “You´re lying.”

“No.” Lexa shook her head. “I don´t really like cheese.”

“That´s tragic.”

That made her huff a laugh. “Oh, it´s the biggest tragedy of my life.”

Clarke wanted to kiss that smile, in the hopes it would be carved into her lips and she could carry it with her. The look on Lexa´s face was expectant. “Oh. My turn?” At her nod, Clarke said the first thing that popped into her head. “I want to kiss you.”

Pupils blew wide and Lexa´s gaze dropped to Clarke´s lips before shooting back up. “We´re getting to know each other Clarke.”

Clarke sighed, and tried not to think about the way she could feel Lexa´s warmth, so close yet not close enough. “Fine. I never had a brother or sister but I always wanted one.”

Lexa looked away, then back at Clarke. “Which would you prefer?”

“I thought a sister, once. But now my friends are like my sisters.”

“Friends can be family.”

Clarke nodded. “Exactly. Your turn.”

“I once stole a skateboard.”

Clarke´s eyes widened. “No?”

Lexa gave a nod. “Yes. I was seven. I tried to go down a hill and karma caught up with me and I broke my arm.”

The image of tiny Lexa on a skateboard was a little adorable. “That´s rough karma for a seven year old.”

Turning so she was facing Clarke a little more, shoulder digging into the wall, Lexa considered her words. “Maybe.” She watched her expectantly.

“Um…” Clarke´s eyes fell to Lexa´s lips again. “I liked kissing you.”

Those lips definitely quirked up a little. “Focus, Clarke.

“Okay…I climbed our Christmas tree when I was four and it and I went through a window.”

Lexa blinked at her. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Three stitches.” Clarke pulled her hair away from her eye and Lexa´s eyes searched until they fell on the scar that was almost unnoticeable. Her fingers came up and run over it so gently Clarke closed her eyes.

“I´m scared of needles.”

Clarke opened them. “You?”

Lexa nodded, her hand grazing down Clarke´s cheek and falling away. “Completely. They´re disgusting.”

Clarke laughed, delighted. “I didn´t think you were scared of anything.”

“Everyone´s scared of something, Clarke. It´s your turn.”

“I cheated on a test once.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Lexa frowned. “I didn´t peg you for the type.”

Playfully, Clarke winked. “There´s a lot you don´t know about me.”

That sincerity laced itself on Lexa´s face again. “I know. I´d like to, though.”

“Me too.”

There was a moment in which they´re playfulness faded away.

“What´s happened to you, Clarke.”

Those words, again. That question, like an arrow in Clarke´s chest. Piercing the exact thing Clarke was trying to ignore. There was no desperate kiss to throw herself into, this time. The words harder to dodge, she may just drown in her own answer.

“My…” Clarke licked her lips. She looked away, her eyes stinging, and then back to Lexa. Their knees were touching and they had curled toward each other a little, but it wasn´t enough to feel like she wasn´t going to splinter apart. “My dad died.”

She drew a shuddering breath and clenched her jaw. Lexa´s eyes stared straight into her own. “I´m so sorry.”

There was a hand on her knee, sure and steady and grounding. The fingers squeezed. “Thank you.”

“Tell me about him.”

So Clarke did. She told her about his habit of reading the paper at the table on Sunday, even when he had brand new tablet. The way he always smelt like coffee and paper. How once he´d built her a cubby house in a tree that they had designed together as he showed her how he made a blueprint at work. About random birthdays. About arguments, barely in her mind now it was clouded with his death. Clarke told Lexa everything she could think of.

“What happened?”

“He had a massive heart attack.”

“I wish I could say something more than I´m sorry.”

Clarke shrugged. “My mum was with him.”

“That´s something.”

Their foreheads were almost touching and Lexa closed the gap. Clarke closed her eyes.

“I think she hates herself.” Clarke whispered.

“Why?” The husk to Lexa´s voice pulled at something in the middle of Clarke.

“She´s a cardiothoracic surgeon and couldn´t do anything.” Clarke hesitated then, her eyes squeezed shut. “And I think I kind of hate her, too.”

She didn´t need to say she knew it wasn´t fair, the way the words choked out, the wetness on her cheeks, left the words bursting with that fact.

“Oh, Clarke.”

And Lexa pushed forward, her lips on Clarke´s, who pulled her in harder, desperate for something that burnt away the guilt at the words she´d felt every day but had never spoken, the reality of them heavy in the room.


	11. Snapping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one took awhile, I had a really busy week or two. I hope you enjoy, and thanks so much for your continued feedback, you guys rock my world.

School seemed unimportant. Clarke walked the halls, scattered, lost in thoughts of the press of Lexa´s kiss and the way her lips quirked at the things that Clarke said, the softening of her eyes. It was hard to see each other, a week could go by with only managing to be in each other´s presence once a week. Those days left Clarke with an ache in her belly and her mind whirring and distracted. Before she´d been distracted by grief so dark and blue Clarke thought she would drown in.

Now, that darkness was bursting with something, was filling with a glow that built and built and seemed like it would overtake everything,

Sometimes, when that glow was overwhelming and Clarke lay in bed with her heart racing and feeling like she was about to float away in the warmth, just the thought of Lexa could bring, her limbs would go cold at the guilt that flooded her. Her father was dead, and Clarke was starting to feel better than she had ever thought she could.

It still felt as if she could pad down the hall and knock at his study, watch him look up from his computer, surrounded by models and paper he still insisted on using, even with the computer programs that made his life so much easier. He would pretend to admonish her for being awake, even as something in his eyes, an ocean like her own, would light up. They´d whisper in the almost-darkness, washed in the light of the computer, and she´d spill her thoughts for him to nod at, to sift through, to piece together so everything made some kind of sense for her to grasp.

But there was no doing that now. Her insides would writhe in her gut, twist and turn and she´d curl into into herself, a ball, and try to breathe through the grasping, choking feeling of missing her father with an ache so deep her bones rattled with it.

She´d fall asleep, however, with a want to see Lexa, her fingers curling against her palm as she´d imagine them running through her hair.

When she could, she went to the bar, but Lexa could never tell her for sure the days she´d be there, and Clarke didn´t really understand how she could get away with being so flaky at a job, even if her boss seemed to be her friend. Some weeks, though, she´d wink and promise a weekend, and the best ones were with the suggestion of a weekday, a night the place was quiet, and the two of them could slip away or, sometimes ever better, sit opposite and trade stories and Clarke could feel like she was really learning something about Lexa. She´d bask in the questions Lexa asked, the interest in everything Clarke had to say.

The feeling that Lexa was holding something back faded but never desisted, a splinter deep in Clarke´s mind that she wouldn´t notice until something ran over it with the slightest of touch. Usually when Lexa would glance away, as if pretending to scan the bar for something when Clarke asked a seemingly innocuous question. But Clarke never pushed, she never wanted to see the way Lexa had reacted the first few times she´d asked more questions, the way her eyes avoided Clarke´s own, the way something in her shuttered when normally Lexa, for Clarke, was anything but closed off. There´d been something in her eyes that Clarke had seen that first time near the lockers, something in her Clarke had reached for and searched for and couldn´t keep away from.

To see that flicker away, even for a second, made her breath catch in her throat.

One night, they were pressed into a corner. It was a Tuesday, the bar was quiet and Lexa had dragged Clarke into the little office. There were nights they went there, and others Lexa tugged her the other way, to the storage room. There was no discernible pattern. They pressed together urgently, and like stars pulled through gravity, like feet to the ground—it was all physics and inevitability and that word always left a sweet taste in the back of Clarke´s mouth.

_Inevitable_.

It was such a better word than impossible.

With Lexa´s mouth against her own, the wetness of her tongue sliding against Clarke´s, it was all Clarke could to to hold in the utterance of that word. To let it shape her lips and form an attachment, to murmur it into Lexa´s mouth and see if she swallowed it own.

She was addictive.

There was a pattern to their movements, now. Clarke new Lexa moaned, deep in her throat, when her teeth grazed the muscle where her shoulder met her neck. Lexa seemed to know that if her fingers crawled along the skin at the base of Clarke´s spine, Clarke´s hips would jerk and they´d be flush together, always clawing to be closer.

But just as Clarke had melted into her, just as the memory of her father´s throaty laugh had faded to nothing, and that ghost that walked in her mother´s eye, Lexa had pulled back, panting, her finger´s cupping Clarke´s cheeks and pressing their foreheads together.

“I want to take you out.”

Those were not the words Clarke had expected to hear. She looked around the room. “We´re out of the bar?”

That had brought the smile that made Clarke´s insides melt. “No—out. Like a movie. Or dinner.” Lexa bit her lip, her gaze so sincere that liquid feeling felt like heat. “Or both?”

All Clarke could do was breathe, “When?”

But they couldn´t pin down a time, and that didn´t matter. Just the memory left her wandering school with a feeling like she shouldn´t be as happy as she was. Lexa wanted to go on a date.

Clarke had done dates.

Finn and her had gotten together at parties. Their circles had widened and ended up including each other and they fell into a step Clarke had found comfortable. They were kissing, then sometimes dating. But she´d never had the itch in her that she had to be wrapped in Lexa, all the time. The aching missing of her when it had been more than a day since they´d seen each other.

Their group all knew that Clarke had ended it with Finn, and they all naturally drifted between the two, their misfit group split in two, people flowing between the two like their bonds tugged them all together constantly. Sometimes, at lunch, Clarke hid herself in the library, partly to try catch up on the time she´d folded into herself, and partly to let her friends have a respite, so they could all clump together, charge ions and positives and negatives, and not worry about balancing their numbers in two. One of those days, her plan had failed, because she heard the voice that was supposed to be in the cafeteria, surrounded by an unfractured group.

“Clarke.”

Her eyes shot up from her text book. Maths was swirling in her brain, equations stuttering and halting. She´d never had a mathematic mind. Her thoughts were visual, colours, shapes. And right then, brown was molten, liquefied, as eyes blinked across the table at her.

“Finn.”

There was a shake in his hand as he picked at the cover of the book he had in front of him. He had always been quiet, and she´d enjoyed that about him. Quiet, intense. At dinner with her father and mother, he´d brought up the situation with Syrian refugees and the conviction in his voice had fired her own. Her father had straightened across from him, her mother nodding and frustration lining their faces at the predicament and lack of change.

Her father had liked Finn. And her father would never know Lexa. That inflated feeling in her chest was back, making it feel like she couldn´t breathe yet had taken in too much oxygen all at the same time.

What had her text book said in bio? Hyperventilation.

Anxiety.

All of that felt so much better when Lexa´s fingers trailed her cheek. She tried to cling to that feeling.

She and Finn had barely spoken in weeks. Clarke didn´t know how avoided who, but they´d orbited each other and avoided colliding.

“How are you?”

He was looking at her like he really wanted to know, and Clarke tried not to think about how her father had grinned when Finn had left, his arm warm around Clarke´s shoulder as he´d told her he liked that one.

Suddenly, it was like speaking around an apple in her throat. “I´m okay. How are you?”

He shrugged then, his hair falling in his eyes, the familiarity of it an ache. “I miss you.”

Finn liked the truth. He never skirted things, never edged around the issue. Truth bombs. She´d whispered that to him once, when she was someone she recognised, before grief had turned her eyes from an ocean into a sky of confusion, before she´d felt tainted by pain that was now more like a loose covering than a restrictive band, but could still smother her at any moment. She´d whispered it back when she was someone who fit with him, before he grated, like her entire life. It had all been thrown up and now it had settled, but the pieces had fallen differently: nothing locked like it used to. Everything was different: she was different.

Sometimes she didn´t think that was a bad thing.

“I´m sorry.”

That brown was like a pool of hurt, something she could wade into and never crawl out of. “You finally messaged me, that night. I thought you were calling because you were excited to see me…but you called me to break up.”

She blinked. That hadn´t occurred to her, so wrapped up in her grief and pain. She´d hurt him in so many ways, and none had really been on purpose That was not who she wanted to be.

“I´m sorry.” The repetition hurt her throat, but he needed it, so she offered it to him.

Her months and months of being checked out, and he´d waited patiently in the sidelines.

He gave a node. “Okay.”

Silence sprinkled around them, and before it could become all encompassing, he spoke again. “Thanks for finally ending it.”

And he left, leaving Clarke with the taste of nostalgia on her tongue.

 

* * *

 

“How´s Finn?”

Her mother´s words made her head jolt up. The remains of Chinese food littered the coffee table: neither had eaten as much as they would have before, and Clarke missed the way her father would persevere with his chopsticks, even with zero coordination. More often than not, he´d use one to stab the chicken, and a laugh like happiness with trickle out of her mother as he ate in a gulp.

That was when they sat at the table, sprawled over it all. That was before the last year or two that Clarke was being pressed with questions about the future and college and growing up. That was before Clarke punished them both for things she didn´t know she was punishing them for.

That was before she knew how fast it could all disappear.

It had been weeks since she´d ended it with Finn, and the echo of her mother´s words sliced through her.

There was a time, once, that Clarke told her mother everything. Almost everything.

A time she would have known weeks ago that Finn was no more.

Clarke watched the TV flicker images, and her mouth dried up.

When was the last time her mother had laughed?

The rice she´d eaten was lead in her stomach.

“Fine.”

Metres separated them on the couch and it could have been a valley, an ocean, an entire galaxy. Her throat ached with the urge to cross it, to slide over and lean into her mother, to feel the relief she knew would seep through her mother´s body at the contact. To tell her something, anything, to let her in. But they weren´t at the table because her father´s place was like a gaping hole and the couch didn´t have his scent anymore and all the air had left the room.

Clarke stood, ignoring that her mother had angled her body towards her on the couch. Ignoring that imploring look she could see from her peripheral vision.

It took no time to gather their dinner remains and then disappear out the door, claiming a group project, the lie so heavy Clarke felt like it had bowed her.

Her mother´s quiet acceptance of her rejection followed her outside.

She got a late bus. The window shuddered under her head where her forehead pressed against the glass, and she let it, hoping it would rattle free some of the anger that flickered at the inside of her chest for no reason. If she could, she´d find Lexa, but she still had no phone and Clarke could show up to the bar and be there alone, and that thought left her cold. Instead, she ended up at Raven´s, who answered the door, took one look at her face, and dragged her outside. Under a cocoon of blankets on the trampoline, the sky stretched over them, crystal clear, and Clarke wondered if anyone else ever felt like they could bathe in the stars. Like they could pull the sky down onto themselves and roll in it, leaving star dust in their hair. She´d first kissed Lexa in this yard, with those same stars mapped overhead, the only witnesses to something that had felt so delicate. Raven was pressed up warm along her side and their breathing synced, slow and steady.

“Want to talk about it?”

Clarke shook her head, so they stared up in silence, the sounds of crickets in the yard in time with the pulse Clarke felt beneath her fingers where they lay over Raven´s wrist.

“I think you should.”

Clarke swallowed, a shooting star trailing across the sky, the urge in Clarke´s fingers to grab its end and finish its journey with it.

“I don´t even know what to say.”

“Why are you here?”

Because Raven was her person. Because home was too hard.

“Because some days, I feel like I can breathe again…” Raven´s wrist twisted and her fingers entwined with Clarke´s. “Others I can´t breathe at all.”

“Your mom?”

Just those words squeezed Clarke´s throat and tears pushed own her cheeks. She swiped them away, her fingers damp with the evidence. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Okay.” There was something sly in Raven´s voice. “What about Lexa?”

Another name that made something in Clarke squeeze, but in a very different way. Lexa was not something they all often talked about. Clarke liked to keep her close, to keep those moments they had as something that was just for Clarke. Moments she could pull out later and go over and over again in her mind, like a mantra, a prayer, her own personal worry beads.

“What about Lexa?” Even Clarke could hear the smile in her own voice, the tears cooling on her cheeks.

“Where did that all come from.”

Clarke had no idea. “All of what?”

“I thought you were happy with Finn?”

The grip of Raven´s hand was steady, calming. “I was. I don´t know, Raven…at first I thought it was just a drunken kiss, an interest…”

“And then?”

Clarke blinked up at the sky. “And then she was all I thought about, even with Dad.” Her voice cracked over that word. “Is that terrible?” The sky was a blur now, the stars a blob with the moisture in her eyes. “Shouldn´t he be all I think about?”

“Hey…” Raven dug her arm under Clarke and pulled her into her. Warmth surrounded her. “I don´t think that at all. I don´t think your dad would think that, either. I think he´d just be happy something makes you happy.”

If Clarke could pay any money in the world, it would be to have her dad saying that to her himself. For it to be his comfort that surrounded her, his smell, his soft voice, the one like gravel, smooth and reassuring and safe. Clarke nestled her face into Raven´s shoulder, rubbing her eyes into the material of her shirt. Raven wouldn´t care if the material was wet. It had been Raven who Clarke, imbibed with too much wine, had done her first alcohol induced vomit on. Tears were nothing.

Octavia was her oldest friend, but something about Raven Clarke clicked with.

“What about you?”

“What about me?” Raven asked.

“What´s up with that Anya chick? The two of you looked like you wanted to kill each other.”

“Nothing.”

Lies were not one of Raven´s talents. She was the smartest person Clarke knew, along with Monty, but lying laced her voice, tempered it. It came as unnaturally as maths to Clarke. Octavia, on the other hand, could drop lies like compliments, a smile curving her lips and a steadiness to her gaze.

“You guys were in a foster place together?”

Clarke had grown up in the safety of a family who cared. Before her father had died, Clarke had been busy feeling like they cared too much, like they were smothering.

She ached to go back to months and months ago.

Foster care was a foreign idea to her. There were tragic stories, like hints of Lexa´s in those files Monty had hacked. Then there were stories like Raven´s, who had been adopted into this family years before.

“It wasn´t a great one, though not the worse. Anya was there before me.”

Rolling onto her back to stare back up at the sky again, Clarke made sure she they were still loped together, her leg thrown gently of Raven´s in its brace.

“You guys didn´t like each other?”

“We barely knew each other.”

No matter what Clarke asked she got nothing more, until Raven turned the conversation to Octavia and Lincoln and Clarke let her, questions burning at the back of her throat.

 

****  
  


“Do you like to read?”

The glass in Lexa´s hand was clean and she dropped the rag she was using on the bar top, looking up at Clarke. She was watching Lexa openly, elbow on the bar top and head propped on her hand. Days had passed since they´d last seen each other, and Lexa had found herself longing for the days of school, lying on the roof and imagining the ways they´d be able to sneak off together. To be seventeen, smitten and with days and days ahead of them to press close together. To sit under bleachers, to press up against lockers, sparks dancing along their skin at the mere presence of each other.

To be seventeen. And only to be seventeen.

The bar was nearly empty. The music was low, a bass thrumming in the air that Lexa could feel in her chest. She crossed her arms and leant on the bar top, too, her arms inches from Clarke´s. Everything smelt like beer. This scene felt like something from a life that shouldn´t be theirs: not yet, not at their age. But it was all they had, and they took whatever they could.

“I do. I love to read.”

The blue of Clarke´s eyes seemed to brighten. Lexa could watch the colour play through them all day. The stormy sight when she was sad, or lost, like when she´d seen her at the bar the first time after Lexa had ran. The twilight of the sky with constellations spread throughout when Lexa kissed her. This lighter blue, when she was listening to Lexa like she wouldn´t want to be doing anything else.

“Me too.” Clarke´s voice was low, meant just for Lexa. “Though I hate when they make movies into books.”

Lexa couldn´t remember the last time she´d seen a movie. But she didn´t want this conversation to end. “You can´t capture a book the same way. You´re doomed to be disappointed.”

“Exactly.” Clarke´s nose wrinkled up and Lexa had never seen anything as adorable. “If you were stuck on a desert island, what book would you take? Only one.”

There was so much Lexa kept from Clarke, secrets shadowed in the back of her mind she danced around constantly, trying to get as close to them as she could to avoid lying altogether. She wanted to tell Clarke about Aden, to tell her how he devoured books. How he could read for hours. To tell her how the weight of him was all that centered Lexa some nights, as he leant against her when he read, or, rarely now he was a bit older, asked him to read to her.

But she couldn´t do that, so she laid out what truth she could.

“When I went into foster care this time, I grabbed my text books.” She flashed Clarke a smile. “I think it means I´m a nerd.”

The delight on Clarke´s face planted a seed of warmth in Lexa´s belly. “A text book?”

Lexa shrugged, pulling away to pick up another glass. “Yeah.”

“That´s so adorable.”

“Shut up.” The smile on her lips felt almost foreign. “What about you?”

“I´d bring another text book so you´d have two.”

Lexa slowed down the rag in her hand, staring at Clarke, her cheeks feeling as if they may shatter. “Because we´d be stuck together?”

“Of course.”

Moving forward to kiss Clarke felt like the most natural movement in the world. Her lips were soft and she tasted like coca-cola and promises.

Clarke stayed until closing and they hovered at the street, Lincoln metres away and pretending to ignore them. It was obvious Clarke wanted to walk her home, that she didn´t want the time to end. If she knew about Aden, about the warehouse, about the existence Lexa spent balanced on a knife´s edge, maybe Lexa could ask her back. Could give her a taste of normal. But none of it was normal, and it was all too perilous, too fragile.

The lies coated her tongue and she hated it. Especially when Clarke offered her nothing but herself.

“Does your mom know you´re here?” Lexa asked, her breath mingling with Clarke´s, their foreheads together.

Clarke shook her head, and that darkness in her eye, the time she looked like a storm, rose up easily, as it always did. It was always there, rumbling in the background of her iris. Under Lexa´s arms, Clarke still felt thinner than the first time they´d been in a bathroom together. Sadness still covered Clarke like a shadow, but now Lexa knew its name and when they were together, Lexa loved to watch if slide away and reveal Clarke underneath.

“She thinks I´m studying.”

“Are you talking to her?”

Clarke tensed under her hands and Lexa wanted to soothe it away. She shrugged and pulled back slightly, looking up and away, avoiding Lexa´s eye. “Not really.”

“Why?”

That look was back on her now, and Lexa met it. “I´m still…I feel…”

Watching Clarke struggle to find the words made Lexa want to backtrack, but she wanted her to acknowledge whatever had formed inside her, had taken her over since her father died.

“I´m still angry.”

Lexa nodded. “That´s okay.”

“Is it?” Clarke´s voice was tight, a string too taught.

Lexa kissed her, softly. “It is.”

“I want to tell her things…but I don´t know how to start.” The words were whispered and Lexa kissed her again.

“Start when you´re ready.”

They peeled apart slowly, said goodbye and Lexa made sure she was on the bus before she and Lincoln fell into step.

“Where´s Aden tonight?”

“With Anya.”

Lincoln was bundled in a coat, it made him seem somehow soft, rather than bulky and big like normal.

“Those two really get along.”

Lexa hummed and nodded. They did. Aden could spend hours with her, and Lexa suspected it was because Anya pushed him harder in training than she did.

It had been months. Around five. Anxiety lived in the back of Lexa´s throat, prickling and uncomfortable. The closer she crawled to eighteen, the more she worried her plan was beyond fallible: Indra wasn´t sold on it. To be honest, neither was Lexa.

How could she prove she deserved Aden? Legally? How would the courts accept her as a guardian? He stared at her with so much faith Lexa thought she´d crack open from it. What if she failed him?

She already was. He stole like he´d done it all his life. He weaved between people and picked pockets with a sureness to his fingers Lexa had never had. School was a distant memory, but not so distant he didn´t miss it. They lived somewhere with no real plumbing. Some days all he ate was dry cereal.

He was so small, and so unshaped. She didn´t want this life to be what moulded him.

“Stand still.”

There was a clicking, something unmistakable. The cocking of a gun.

She and Lincoln froze, the presence behind them looming. It was as if she could feel the gun. As one, they raised their hands above their heads, their heads turning just slightly to catch each other´s eye. Lincoln´s throat bobbed as he swallowed and Lexa, somehow, felt calm now. Her heart a steady beat in her ribs.

“Look ahead.”

The voice was low, rasped. Desperation tinged its edges and if there wasn´t a gun pointed at them, Lexa would empathise with the hunger she heard it in it. They looked ahead, their hands brushed over their heads.

Footsteps brought the man close and Lexa felt the nozzle of the gun press between her shoulder blades.

“Alright, big guy. The guns right on the girl. Empty your pockets. Cell phone. Cash. Cards.”

The man picked the wrong people. The only thing they had of those was maybe a crumpled bill. Lincoln had a cell phone, but he always left it at the bar.

“Reach into your pockets nice and slow.”

Lincoln´s hand, the warmth of it, left hers and she could feel him inching it to his pockets. The metal pressed against her back wavered and Lexa took the moment. She spun her forearm pushing the man´s with the gun away from both of them and thrusting her hand up to take out his nose. Blood spurted and her eyes widened when she saw it wasn´t one guy, but two. A fist connected with her cheek, the thump of it proof Anya had hit her months ago with only minor intention. Heat flared at the sensation and then she kicked out, taking the one with the gun out and kicked the gun far away, the sound of it clattering over cement.

Lexa hated guns.

Lincoln had the other on the ground and a firm punch knocked him out.

Breathing hard, they looked down at them, both out cold.

What if Aden had been with them?

That thought echoed through her mind and Lexa´s fists tightened, breathing hard. She looked to Lincoln.

“Recognise them?”

He gave a nod. “You don´t?”

She searched their faces. They looked gaunt, the hungry look of their faces one she knew too well. But who they were, she didn´t know.

“No.”

“That one.” Lincoln nudged the one who he´d taken out. “Was one of the ones Indra turned away when you were first with us. He´d done some nasty stuff in a shelter, and she´d been warned about him.”

Squinting in the darkness, Lexa cocked his head. There was something familiar there, under the matted beard. His eye lids fluttered.

“Let´s get out of here.”

They turned as one and bolted and didn´t stop until they were at the warehouse. Aden was asleep upstairs in their room and Anya had thrown herself over a couch. A sick feeling flared in Lexa´s stomach and she ignored Anya´s look, leaving Lincoln to explain, before she pounded up the stairs, panic flickering and her cheek throbbing. Aden lay in their bed, washed in orange light and Lexa hovered in the doorway, watching the way his chest rose and fell. A skinny leg kicked out from under the sleeping bah, his hand trailing off the bed and on the floor.

Of course he was fine.

What if he´d been there?

She could hear voices murmuring below, Indra´s floated up, anger tracing her words in a whispered hiss. She didn´t go down, the tremble in her fingers having nothing to do with what had occurred, but rather, with what could have happened.

Aden was fine.

With a final glance backwards, Lexa went upstairs and sat on the roof, her feet kicking against the wall where she sat on the edge. The sky was clouded over, the light of the moon weak behind them. She longed for them to part, to see the stars and trace the constellations with her gaze, to stare up until the rest faded away and it was like she was there among them.

The door opened and Lexa didn´t need to check to know it was Anya who sat next to her, her feet still while Lexa´s still moved restlessly.

“You okay?”

Lexa shrugged.

“You´re going to have a great black eye.”

And a great bruise over her cheek bone. She hoped the bastard hurt his hand.

“Better than the one you gave me.”

Anya snorted. “Damn. You´re right.”

Lexa wanted to tell her to go away, to leave her to this feeling compressing her chest. The words wouldn´t come, however, so she didn´t force them.

“Aden wasn´t there.”

“He could´ve been.” Lexa didn´t take her eyes off the light filtering out, staring at the way it looked like beams. She wondered where the light hit, what it led to, if the universe was highlighting the parts of the world it approved of.

The rooftop was cased in shadows, shrouded in darkness.

“But he wasn´t.”

“They had a gun. What´s an eight year old to that?”

Anya sighed. “I know. But that´s why we´ve taught him to be fast. He´s on the street, as much as you´ve tried to shelter him from that, he´s seen shit. But kids at school and in nice fancy homes see shit. Get shot.”

That did nothing to make Lexa feel better. “That´s different to actually having him out here, wandering around at night.”

Anya nudged Lexa´s should with her own and didn´t speak until Lexa turned to look at her. “You have no idea what situation he´d be in if he wasn´t with you. He´s happiest with you.”

Sometimes, Lexa wondered if that was enough.

“You should put some ice on your eye.”

That finally made Lexa huff a laugh. “Sure, I´ll just go to the freezer and get some.”

Anya smirked. “We could call the butler.”

“Yes, please do ring for Charles and while he´s bringing forth ice, request some tea, please. Tepid.”

“Tepid?” Anya raised her eye brows and Lexa shrugged.

“I´ve always wanted to use that word.” The tense feeling in Lexa´s shoulders eased a little and her feet slowed to a gentle kicking.

God, what a mess.

It felt like forever ago Lexa had been lost in Clarke, surrounded by the quiet buzz of the bar and the quirk of her lips as they asked inane questions. Though, thinking of Clarke, she had asked Lexa about something she had no answers for.

“Anya…”

“Mm?”

“How do you know Raven?”

The shoulder brushing hers tensed. “I told you, same foster place.”

“Yeah, but why the few times I´ve seen you together are you…you know?”

Tense. Angry. Glaring. All of those adjectives. Since the first time, Lexa had only seen Raven and Anya together one other, but it was like they circled each other, eyes narrowed and snapping. Something sparked between them. They barely spoke word, yet Lexa watched them and couldn´t understand it.

“Nothing.” Lexa waited her out, the distant sounds of cars and the darkness creeping in. Finally, “We were always like that. But it was fun, we´d rib and piss each other off, but it wasn´t…it was fun.”

Lexa just continued to wait.

“Then one night we stole some vodka. We were, I don´t know, twelve. Thirteen. And I kissed her. She kissed me back, the super religious dad found us and screamed and yelled and she got moved and I ran. For like, the second time. But this time was permanent.”

“So why the hatred?”

Anya shrugged. “I don´t know. She didn´t defend me when he blamed me. I didn´t defend her when he locked her in her room. It was a fucking mess.”

“Have you thought about…you know…talking to her?”

Anya turned to look at her, an eyebrow raised. “Does Clarke know about this? About Aden?”

Lexa blinked and turned away.

“There´s a whole world of things we all _should_ talk about, Lexa.”

 

* * *

 

“I´m off to night shift.”

Her mother´s voice was timid, a ghost of the commanding, defined woman Clarke had grown up with. When Clarke looked up from the cereal she was crunching through for dinner, milk dripping off her spoon, her mother was trying to look at her. She could tell. But her gaze kept flitting away, stuttering on Clarke like a glitch. Like she didn´t trust herself. Or Clarke. Her throat ached, like something was swelling in it and she was about to choke on emotions she couldn´t name.

When had her family become this?

“Okay.”

When had Clarke been unable to offer more than short syllables that felt like they grated past her teeth as her tongue forced them out?

Her mother´s hands had been skilled, had been on her father´s chest.

Sometimes, when Clarke was at her worse, when all the air felt leeched from the room, she pictured the paramedics having to pull her mother off her father, having to force her acceptance that he´d been gone before her hands had even made it against his sternum.

For a moment that stretched forever before them, expanding and contracting like the world had no thought but for the mother and daughter in a room that was too small and too big all at once, they stared at each other. Her mother swallowed, snapped the moment in two and Clarke could feel it shatter as she nodded and turned to go. In a moment of panic, Clarke wanted to pull the pieces into her lap and drive them back together, to use the look in her mother´s eye as glue to make sure they didn´t fall apart again.

“Finn and I broke up.” Her mother paused in the doorway, and there was a shake to her shoulders as she straightened them and turned. She stared unblinking at Clarke, as if anything more could fracture what Clarke was holding out with trembling fingers. “Weeks ago.”

Her voice cracked over the words, not having anything to do with what she was telling her mother but that she was telling her anything at all. Her mother stepped forward so they were only metres away. It felt closer than she had been in months and months, even with the kitchen island between them.

“I´m sorry to hear that.” The voice wasn´t timid, now, but soft, a sincerity in it that did nothing to assuage the aching in Clarke´s throat. “Do…do you want to talk about why?” Her lips were quivering and Clarke wondered at the emotion her mother was repressing.

Parts of Clarke were pulling away, screaming with white knuckles to stand up and leave, and another part was slamming her forward, urging her to fall against the softness of her mother and breathe her in.

“I met someone.” No surprise lit up her mother´s face. She was watching Clarke with an intensity that seemed borne of a fear of chasing her away. Clarke´s heart pounded in her chest, sped up to beat a rhythm in her ears and left her dizzy. With no warning the lump dissolved and left her throat tight, prickling. Clarke wanted to tell her father this. To see his reaction. To know if he would stand up and walk away in disgust or smooth her hair back with cool palms. “A girl. From school.”

The parts that wanted to run almost won out, Clarke´s foot twitching where it rested against the rung on the stool.

Her mother took another step forward, the kitchen island separating them. With hands on the edge, her mother cocked her head. “What´s her name?”

“Lexa.” The name whispered form her lips, her eyes intent on her mother and her vision blurry, wet, and she had no idea why. Even more horrifying, her mother´s were the same.

“Does she treat you well?”

Clarke nodded, her lips pressed together. Haltingly, arm jerking, her mother raised her hand, hovering just against Clarke´s cheek, waiting until Clarke ducked her head and pressed the skin against her mother´s palm. Something sighed over her mother´s body and she smiled, shaky and relieved and painful.

“That´s all that matters to me.”

A snap in Clarke´s chest and a sob broke from her mouth. “Dad would have liked her.”

Her mother nodded, eyes glittering and red. “I´m sure he would have.”

 

*


	12. Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys rock, your feedback rocks. This one is short, sorry about that, and I had planned for it to be a bit longer but then decided to split the events. So enjoy less angst than usual :) This fic will be winding to an end soon...

“What happened to your eye?”

Hands were desperately cupping Lexa´s cheeks and, when once she would have pulled away from such a needing touch, she found herself leaning into it, her eyes fluttering closed. Clarke´s voice was sharp, concern thick over the words, and that was something else Lexa wanted to fall into, to wrap around herself like a blanket.

She had never wanted someone to be concerned about her. That was her job, to worry, to pull Aden close and cover his eyes when she could, or distract him if she couldn´t, or run with him when things were dire.

But this felt nice. Sweet.

Like something that shouldn´t be hers, should be some girl´s who spent her time walking to and from school and buried in studies and stumbled over a girl touched by the sun and stars who somehow turned that brightness onto her.

Remembering where she was, Lexa pulled back, the bar separating her from Clarke, whose eyes were intent on Lexa´s face. The bruise had darkened to a black, to something dark and speckled with a purple that seemed unnatural on her skin.

“Don´t freak out.”

Clarke blinked at her, her brow furrowed and her hands still against Lexa´s cheek. The touch was keeping Lexa in that moment, keeping her rooted to the ground when she felt like she could float away. The divide between their lives should have been more prominent than ever, but instead Lexa felt like they´d melded together into one.

“What happened to your eye?”

Lexa sighed. “Lincoln and I almost got mugged the other night.” Clarke´s eyes were widening and her mouth dropped open. Lexa hurried to finish. “But we´re fine, seriously, nothing happened.”

Walking behind Lexa with a box, Lincoln huffed, “Yeah, ´cause you knocked the gun out of his hands.”

“There was gun?” Clarke´s voice was definitely high pitched and her hand dropped down the the bar. The rush of cold air against Lexa´s cheek was bracing and her stomach fell. If she didn´t think it would just bounce off his overly bulging muscle, Lexa would throw something at Lincoln.

“But I knocked it out of his hands?”

Clarke was looking at her like she didn´t know her, and that made Lexa´s stomach ache, because as much as she hated it, she really didn´t. “How?”

“Fast reflexes?”

Lexa wanted to kill Lincoln, but at the same time, wanted him to spill everything for her so Lexa didn´t feel like she was holding it all back.

“But you´re really okay?”

“I am, Clarke.”

“You shouldn´t walk alone. Can´t your foster family pick you up or something?”

If only that was the biggest of Lexa´s problem. That divide grew a little, at the issues and problems that Lexa had submerged herself in and the way Clarke could never really understand it. At the lies she´d muttered when she´d thought she´d been saving herself, protecting Aden.

But how could Clarek ever understand it if Lexa never gave her the chance?

“I´ll be more careful.”

Because what else did Lexa have to offer but false words? Clarke´s accepting smile left something hollow in Lexa´s stomach and when she sat further back on her stool, the distance now felt like something tore between them.

The evening was a slow one, time passing in fits and starts. In the moments Lexa was serving and cleaning and clearing, the time dragged, itched along, as she felt Clarke´s eyes on her the entire time. When things quietened down and Lexa sat on the stool next to Clarke, their knees knocking between them, or stood across from her on the bar, their elbows on the bar top and mere inches of air drifting between their skin, time flew, raced by, left Lexa breathless and winded when she had to move away from their easy conversation and soft touches to serve a beer or wipe down some tables. Lincoln floated between them, only rolling his eyes once. When Clarke whispered Octavia he grinned, red faced, and left them to it.

Thirty minutes before they closed, Lexa slipped into the office, then slipped out again, nodding to Lincoln. He flipped the closed sign and disappeared out the back with a wave.

Clarke watched him go, her hand in the air to wave back and confusion on her face. “Shouldn´t we walk out with him?”

Lexa shook her head, walking around the bar to stand in front of class, her heart suddenly fluttering and her stomach a hive. “Not tonight. I´ll do the final close.”

Slowly, like a flower unfolding in warmth, a smile blossomed over Clarke´s lips. Still on the stool, she hooked a finger in Lexa´s belt loop and tugged her between her legs, arms winding around her waist. Lexa could have sighed into the contact and never left it. Everything with Clarke left her settled and reeling at the same time, uncertain with her footsteps yet marching on determined all at once.

“Come with me?”

Ignoring the questioning look Clarke sent her, Lexa tugged her towards the office, her hand clammy where Clarke clutched it. She opened the door and stepped in, watching Clarke´s face.

The room was lit with mismatched candles, as many as Lexa had been able to find and pull out of places she wasn´t proud of, some donated by Lincoln from the emergency ones they kept both in the bar and in the warehouse. The light flickered, shadows playing across Clarke´s face as her eyes widened. The fingers wrapped in her own twitched and everything, for a second, stood still as she waited for Clarke to say something.

It was too much. Too corny. Too much like a bad romance movie, a cliche.

It was just that there had been so much they didn´t do, and this was all Lexa had to give: there was no spare money for movies, no dinners, and Clarke deserved a date.

Clarke deserved everything.

Finally, her lips quirked, curving up again and Lexa let out a breath she hadn´t realised she´d held, the pressure expanding in her ribs the last tense few seconds.

There was candlelight in Clarke´s hair, in her eyes, and as they ate the pizza she´d traded a few free pints for with a regular who worked in a pizza shop across the street, she felt like it settled inside her, glowing in her chest.

“How is your mom?”

Lexa always asked. She knew Clarke held resentment fuelled by grief, and Lexa knew how that felt, to fire your heart then freeze it to a person. But she also knew that Clarke´s heart held the ability to melt, that as her grief settled, so would that fire. She knew, in the way her eyes screamed grief when they talked about her mother, not just her father.

Their shoulders pressed together where they sat leaning against the wall as they often did, feet and legs hanging off the side, pizza crusts scattered, forgotten, over the table.

Aden knew she would be late today, and Lexa was just happy he had agreed to stay behind more the last few days. He´d panicked the morning he´d seen her eye, and she had told him the truth: she tried to protect him from some things, but also needed him to understand that the world they were in was filled with things that sought to bring them down. Lexa felt like she had when she´d been small, tiny, no more than five, and had slipped on her mother´s shoes and tried to walk in them: she was carrying things too big, too adult, walking a path too big for her and stumbling was not an option.

Clarke pressed her lips to Lexa´s shoulder and hummed, the skin on Lexa´s shoulder warming with the motion. Puffs of warm air added to the sensation, and she wondered if she needed to ever leave this bubble.

“She´s okay.” Now Clarke´s lips moved against her shirt and she turned her head, pressing her cheek to Lexa´s shoulder, their sides melded together and hands interlaced between them. Could they completely meld together? Push past the air between them and pretend it wasn´t there?

Did Clarke know how much Lexa held back?

She didn´t want to hold back.

“We talked…a little. I told her.” Clarke fingers tightened. “About you.”

Lexa turned her head, Clarke pulling back a little at the quickness of the movement. “You did?”

“I did. One day, I´d like you to meet her.”

That anger that usually coated Clarke´s gaze was simmering, not raging, and it left Lexa relieved to no longer see such rage in the blue of Clarke´s eyes. Lexa smiled, even at the thought of would that ever be possible? “I´d like that. One day.”

The answering grin left Lexa warm, a tug low in her belly that she had started to think Clarke owned. They met in a kiss bathed in stuttering candlelight, tongues warm and wet and Lexa would give anything, she realised, to keep Clarke this close. She shared so much, so easily, and Lexa wanted to give her something to meet that trust and match it. Fingers tugged at her shirt and soon it puddled on the floor with Clarke´s, followed by bras and pants and underwear. With a gasp, their skin pressed together and Lexa thought she was going shatter apart at the press of Clarke´s fingers, the feel of her spread beneath her. When she came, for the first time naked together, Lexa didn´t know if it was Clarke´s tears or her own on her cheeks.

 

* * *

 

Bruises, Lexa was learning, faded fast sometimes and painfully slowly others. The bruises that smattered her insides still felt tender, coloured, they had for years and years, some matching the imprint of her mother´s voice and other Lexa´s own bitter tasting disappointment. The one on her eye disappeared so fast, it was like it had never been.

The ones that danced over her collarbones, started the red Lexa felt when Clarke touched her gently, then not so gently, but faded to something dark, the shadow in Clarke´s eye, always faded too fast after Clarke had sucked at her skin with her lips. Lexa liked them, to carry a part of Clarke that felt like it was all hers.

The warehouse was getting hot. Too hot. It left Aden cranky, surly, a glimpse of the person he could become in a few years. Lexa felt them crawling towards her eighteenth birthday and had no idea how she was going to get out of there, to get Aden out of there and back in school. So long out of it, he´d be so far behind.

So would Lexa.

And he asked questions.

“Why are you smiling?”

Anya scoffed. “Yeah,” she said, a smirk on her lips, “Why are you smiling, Lexa?”

Other days, it was more obvious, “I heard you laughing at the bar the other night, from the office.” A night Aden had come, and Lexa had insisted both Gustus and Lincoln walk home with them. Shadows had pressed on all sides and not one part of Lexa had been worried about herself, but for the boy next to her who felt like a part of her. Who was a part of her. “You never laugh like that.”

Lexa cleared her throat and bounced to the side as he used her distraction to throw a hit. “Sloppy.” She said, and his eyes narrowed, and for a second Lexa saw her mother, leaving her still and staring and ensuring the next one landed as Aden took advantage of her pause. He crowed with his success, but bounced straight back in defence, not one to rub in the shot.

He was a good kid.

Gustus watched them from the wall, noting the play of Aden´s feet, the way they danced and how he ducked under her arm. He´d mentioned boxing one night and left Lexa glaring at him with as much venom as she could gather.

But then Aden had asked about sports he could do, and then he´d mentioned boxing.

Lexa didn´t want that for him.

But damn, did it make sense.

“So, who makes you laugh like that?” He made the face of a disgusted eight year old. “Have you got a boyfriend?”

Lexa paused, her arms lowering slowly and Aden stayed ready, but cocked his head as he looked up at her. “What if I had a girlfriend?”

Why was her heart racing?

His brow furrowed, and he looked like Aden again, small and young and confused.

She really hoped that anger didn´t build him him, didn´t take him over.

He just stared at her, clearly thinking.

“Do you?” he asked.

Lexa could feel Gustus´ eyes on her, intent and heavy.

“I think so.”

Aden grinned, ducked close, landed a hit to the padding on her rib then danced behind her so she had to whip around. “Okay.” He said. “Can I meet her?”

Lexa shrugged and stepped in on his right side, taking advantage of the fact that he was a lefty and throwing him off balance. She tripped him up and before he could scowl at her, heaved him over her shoulder, her knees struggling with the bulk of him, and spun them, his shriek of laughter making Gustus boom a laugh himself.

Later, Gustus made Aden sit down to study, something mathematical that made Lexa itch to join in. She´d loved maths, the formulaic manner it had, the way there was always an answer. After only ten minutes he threw down his pencil, colour high in his cheeks.

“I don´t even need this.” He looked up, the brown in his eyes scathing, painful. Lexa met the gaze, even as something in her yearned to flinch away. “I don´t go to school, anyway.”

His chair scraped loudly, Indra looking through her office door and Lexa and Gustus and she all watching him pound up the metal steps, the sound echoed in Lexa´s chest.

She looked to Gustus and he looked back steadily. “He´s right.” She said.

“Which part?”

There was a test in that question. “Not that he doesn´t need it.” Gustus blinked. “In his frustration. The fact that he doesn´t go to school.”

Gustus nodded. “He´s a bright boy, but that anger could end up eating him alive.”

Lexa waited ten minutes and followed him up, pulling Aden onto the roof to sit next to her until the knot of his shoulders eased and he swung his legs in time to hers, a breeze playing through his hair.

She owed him more than this, but her hands had nothing else to give him.

 

* * *

 

It was the type of night that wrapped its way around Clarke and left her her woozy with contentment. The table was littered with empty glasses, some still holding warmed flat beer at the bottom, long abandoned. Other voices were a mere murmur, background noise to everything else. The music verged on too loud, people straining their voices just slightly, but not so loud anyone had bothered to ask for it to be turned down. It was a Friday night, the kind that left Clarke lathed in contentment, with an urge for the future sparking in her limbs even while craving everything to stay the same.

She breathed easier, now. Her house wasn´t trying to smother her. Her mother and she took two steps forward and one step back, rather than visa versa, and sometimes Clarke wanted to collapse under the relief of it. Some moments, she found happiness spilling through her chest and she took a moment, gasping at the shock that she wasn´t drowning in grief so much anymore, but treading water.

Jasper was trying to balance a glass on his forehead, his head thrown back and Monty shoved him, trying to knock it off. Octavia was switching between making eyes at Lincoln and joining in, throwing cards down at the game they played in fits and starts, picking it up intensely for five minutes before losing interest only to start again. Next to Clarke, Raven had her leg thrown over Octavia´s, her shoulders pushed against Clarke, a grin so careless on her lips it left Clarke breathless. On her break, Lexa plopped into the empty chair on Clarke´s other side, her cheeks flushed with the heat of bussing tables and the fullness of the room. She dropped a kiss on Clarke´s lips, soft and short and perfect and Clarke grinned at her in a way that should have been embarrassing. A comfortable kiss was almost better than the ones they shared alone, heated and gasping.

Almost.

As Lexa tugged Clarke away, Anya caught her eye, leaning against the bar, a tumblr of golden brown liquid in her hand. There was something about her that could catch anyones attention, a dangerous silence, an attractiveness that threatened to burn people that came too close.

The last thing Clarke saw was Raven leaning on the bar next to her, her face screwed up and cheeks red, no doubt dripping something angry Anya´s way.

Those two circled like sharks, and Clarke was waiting for one to drag the other down with a scream.

But that was easily forgotten and she found herself pressed against a door, a thigh between hers and hands up her shirt. She giggled, an actual giggle, one that sounded like it belonged to Clarke from forever ago, but she was starting to realise could still be hers.

“I have ten minutes…”

Clarke grinned at the words whispered against her neck. “Ten minutes is plenty.”

There were nails under her bra and it should have hurt but instead Clarke bucked, a groan guttural in her throat.

It was so easy, to lose herself to Lexa.

When they tumbled out ten minutes later, maybe fifteen—Clarke winced—the bar had even more people.

“I have to go soon.” She said.

Lexa turned back to her, her eyes sparking and green and reminding Clarke of limes, the taste sweet on her tongue. “What?”

She leaned in, her lips to Lexa´s ear, feeling the shudder it enticed. “I have to go soon?”

“Oh?” Lexa didn´t question it, she never pushed, but Clarke wanted to give her a reason. Lexa pulled back, those eyes imploring her to stay even as Clarke knew she would kiss her goodnight and watch her leave, if that´s what Clarke said she needed to do.

“I told mom I´d be home at twelve. I´m trying a new thing…”

Lexa´s lips twitched up and Clarke shrugged, feeling shy all of a sudden. “I´m glad, Clarke.”

“Where´s Raven?”

Clarke had glanced to their table and seen it devoid of her friend. Lexa looked behind her and then suddenly laughed.

“What?” Clarke asked.

She followed Lexa´s line of sight and her mouth dropped open. In a dark corner near the entrance, Raven and Anya were entwined, hands grasping hair and pulling each other close.

“Oh my God. Lexa.” Clarke couldn´t look away, and Lexa laughed again, the sound grating against the surprise she felt. “Lexa! They´re kissing.”

“You´re really surprised?”

Clarke turned her look on her, hoping her expression conveyed it. “Uh, yes.”

Lexa´s fingers chucked under her chin and Clarke shut her mouth obediently.

“I don´t think anyone else is.”

Was she really surprised? Clarke looked back to the two in the corner and her mouth dropped open again, ever so slightly. She really was. Blindly, she followed Lexa to the table and laughter made her look at it finally. Everyone was staring at her.

“Seriously?” Octavia asked, “You´re shocked?”

Later, Octavia falling asleep against the window of the last bus, Clarke on time to arrive when she´d told her mother she would, Raven shot Clarke a look.

“Shut up.”

Clarke smirked. Raven´s lips were swollen, a red mark scratched over her neck. “Didn´t say a word.”

“You didn´t have to.” Her eyes closed and her head fell back against the head rest, but Clarke kept smirking. “I can feel you watching me.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback loved and appreciated :)


	13. And it´s done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you so much for the repeated feedback, you guys all rock.

Books were strewn over Clarke´s bedroom carpet, papers littered amongst them all, complemented by empty chip packets and cookie boxes. On her stomach, Octavia lay with her head in her hands, elbows propped on the carpet and hair in a sloppy bun. A glass sat under her chin and she sucked on a straw, fingers digging into her cheeks as she read the text book in front of the glass. On Clarke´s bed, Raven was writing complex equations Clarke had caught a glimpse of and gone cross-eyed over at the sight. Every now and again she snapped her gum before going back to mindlessly chewing it. Exams were approaching and the stress of it was a constant fizz in their blood.

The history book on Clarke´s lap was starting to blur, dates melding until she had no idea what she´d just read. Sick of reading, the monotony clawing at her skull, she pulled out a stack of index cards and started filling them out, making her own set of flash cards.

“You´re procrastinating.” Octavia didn´t even look up from her book.

“Am not.”

“You´re making flash cards and going to spend a good few hours decorating them.” Her eyes flicked up.

Clarke looked at the boat she was drawing, details down to the carving in the rail, a visual aid to help her remember which boat landing she had to remember to help her recall the date. “What? It helps.”

Octavia snorted, going back to her book. “And you get to doodle.”

Clarke grinned, pen tracing the sail. “Yup.”

They always teased her, but then asked to borrow the cards later. A fact Clarke would forever remind them of. There was an ease of normalcy in the room and when the front door opened then clicked closed, Clarke didn´t feel her entire body tense like it had before. Life in her house didn´t terrify her, didn´t press down and suffocate anymore. Her mother and she moved around each other more fluidly, the hole her father left not gone but shifted, almost as if out of their way a bit more, so they didn´t trip and fall into it, or accidentally push each other down it with their bitterness.

When her mother knocked at the door and waited for Clarke to call to come in, she pushed it open slowly, leaning on the frame and looking at them all. She looked tired, but her eyes no longer glinted desperation, pits Clarke avoided and ran from.

“Hey, girls.” She murmured. “How´s the studying?”

There was something in her mother´s eye that seemed almost grateful to find them all there, spread out and stress on their faces. Clarke wondered if her mother had thought she´d lost this, and guilt squirmed in her stomach at the thought of how angry she´d been, at times still was, at her mother. At the looks she´d thrown her way, not even granting her furious words, just silence and avoidance and pain.

Raven groaned. “It´s hell.”

Her mother winced sympathetically. “AP physics?” At Raven´s nod she winced again. “That´s not fun. But if anyone can do it, Raven, you can.”

“Thanks, Abby.”

Clarke´s mother had always had a soft spot for Raven. When Raven had been taken to the hospital a few years ago after her accident, Clarke´s mother had visited her regularly, trying to pull Raven out of the funk she was in when she´d lost eighty percent of the mobility in her leg. Her foster parents had done a lot, but sometimes Clarke thought it was thanks to her mother that Raven had thrown herself into her physical therapy so hard.

Her mother was a good person, and that guilt flared again at the memory of the last few months.

“It´s almost eight—have you eaten?”

Her eyes were back on Clarke and she nodded. “We heated up the frozen pizzas we had. We left you some.”

“Mm. Nutritious.” The playful tone that curled her mother´s words at the end left Clarke feeling lighter. “Thanks.”

Clarke shrugged, suddenly awkward.

“Did you say it´s almost eight?” Sitting up, Octavia looked around the room blurry eyed.

“Just gone.”

“Shit—I mean, damn.” A grimace and wry grin. “I´m going to be late. Hot date.” She winked at Clarke and Raven. “Thanks for the use of the floor, Abby.”

Abby smiled at her, and Clarke wondered how her mother could smile yet be traced with sadness still, echoes of it written in the lines around her mouth, tracing her cheeks.

“You´re always welcome, Octavia.”

Octavia paused at the door and Clarke couldn´t see her face. “Thank you.”

She stayed a moment, a hand on Clarke´s mother´s arm, her backpack over one shoulder, then disappeared.

“Clarke.” Her mother waited for Clarke to look at her before she kept talking. “Whenever you want to invite Lexa over, she´s welcome.”

The genuine tone of her mother´s voice, the way her gaze wavered, as if scared Clarke would jerk back and away left Clarke´s throat tight. “I´ll ask her.”

Her mother gave a nod and a last wave at Raven before turning to leave. With her hand on the door knob, she paused. “It´s really nice having you girls back in the house.”

And she closed the door, leaving a heaviness in the room.

“I´m glad you two are talking again.” Clarke looked over to Raven, who had dropped her text book off the side of the bed. She flopped on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “I was worried there, for awhile.”

“For awhile, so was I.”

Dropping her stuff on her desk, Clarke swallowed. The watch at wrist ticked steadily, a sound she still needed next to her ear to sleep. The bed dipped when she fell onto her back next to Raven, staring straight up with her. When had everything started to feel like she should cope again? It felt tenuous, like she was balanced on a wire. Would it just fall out from under her?

“So…Anya.”

A pillow hit Clarke in the face and she pulled it off, sitting up on an elbow to narrow her eyes at a smirking Raven.

“You deserved that.”

“You made out in a bar last week for everyone to see, and then the other day she was waiting at school for you, all dressed in leather and looking stupidly hot and you just disappeared off with her.”

There was a flash of something over Raven´s face, a look, then neutrality and Clarke wondered if she´d imagined it.

“We went to her place.”

Clarke´s eyebrows rose and there was a stab of jealousy that she hadn´t done that with Lexa. “I´m impressed. You guys go way back.”

Raven nodded absentmindedly, eyes back on the ceiling, and Clarke dropped back against the bed. “We do.”

“I thought you hated each other.”

Movement next against Clarke´s shoulder told her Raven had shrugged. “We do.”

“But…?”

“No but. We´re just…I don´t know. Getting something out of our system.”

“Naked?”

A hand whacked Clarke on her leg and she laughed, the sound of Raven´s own laughter melding with her own.

 

* * *

 

If Lexa hadn´t taken Aden´s hand that day, would he have been okay? Would he be at a house, right now, studying, about to be called to a home cooked meal? Would he have spent the day in the routine of school, working towards a future that was more than this? There were teenagers sprawled throughout the warehouse. A summer storm had brought more of them in at the same time. Some were playing cards, the cardboard bent and creased in their hands. Others were sparring, shouts and the sound of skin slapping mats filtering into the room past the pounding sound of rain that filled the entire building. Some were sorting food in the kitchen area, organising pallets and making sure they had enough for the night. Two had left earlier, garbage bags over their clothes, in the hopes of raiding a supermarket dump spot without being chased off.

Aden was up a ladder, Gustus up one next to him, and he was been shown an electrical circuit, Gustus trying to work out a way to tap into an electrical grid outside.

Lexa really had no idea what they were doing, but Aden had shown an interest and that had been all it took for Gustus to pull out an ancient book on wiring and circuitry and start using words she didn´t even want to learn.

With her feet up on a table, Lexa was thumbing her way through a book Indra had recommended and keeping an eye on Aden.

Today she didn´t have to be at the bar, but she was going by the next day. Last week, Lincoln had gone with her to open her a bank account, something she could do without parental approval over sixteen. She was glad for the birth certificate she´d shoved in the bottom of her bag. Together, they´d deposited they money she´d earnt there, given the bar as an address and just yesterday her card had arrived there. She´d stood for longer than she thought she would, turning the plastic card over and over again in her hands, running her fingertips over the numbers.

It felt like a step. One that made her feel legitimate, one that fuelled some hope that one day, she could legally have Aden in her care.

She left the card at the bar, under the paperwork that confirmed her social security number in a safe Lincoln kept, small and unobtrusive in the office.

It amazed her, to think she had some money in a bank. That she could could go to a shop and buy something.

But for now, all that money needed to accumulate, to prove she could support them later. For now, they weren´t going anywhere and wouldn´t get to stop picking through the food supermarkets deemed inedible.

But it was coming.

Lexa had seen others leave, one since she´d arrived, and a couple the year she´d spent here before. Indra and Lincoln and Gustus got them jobs, used connections to get scholarships for one girl to get into community college. They tried to always make sure the kids they helped on the street, got off of the streets.

It all seemed surreal, like it couldn´t happen for her.

Her stomach still twisted and turned and left her raw when she thought about what it all meant for Aden, what to options were for their future.

There was a sharp breeze that blew through and it took Lexa a minute to notice, but Raven and Anya had entered.

Lexa felt like something cold was running down her spine. She´d talked to Anya about this. Not that her bringing Raven again made much difference after the first time. She snapped the book shut and set it on the table, her hands resting on top of it. Raven said something that made Anya smirk. Some of the teens turned to look at the two who had entered but most didn´t pay attention. To them, if Anya brought someone in, they were cool.

Yet Lexa felt like the entire world had tilted, just as it had the other afternoon when Anya had brought Raven and disappeared upstairs, but not before Raven had caught sight of Lexa, eyes widening at the image of her pouring over a book with Aden.

“Anya.” Indra´s voice was like a whip and with a roll of her eyes, Anya went to Indra´s room and shut the door behind her.

For a second, Raven pretended to avoid Lexa´s gaze, her hands buried deep in her back pockets and Lexa took a moment to take her in. Way back when her life hadn´t made any sense, but had made more than it did now, she´d liked Raven instantly. The girl had a way with people and seemed unerringly loyal to Clarke.

It was that that worried Lexa.

Finally, Raven caught her eye. She straighted her shoulders and walked over, dropping into a chair across from Lexa. She was a conundrum of a girl, always one for a wide smile and quick joke—but now she eyed Lexa now, no hint of a grin.

“Lexa.”

“Hello, Raven.”

They stared a minute and finally, Lexa broke it. She needed to know. Anya had assured her Raven wasn´t going to say anything, but she needed to ask. “Did you tell Clarke?”

Raven´s eyebrows rose slightly. “No.”

“Thank you.”

“I will though, if you don´t soon.”

Lexa´s heart stilled for a second before pounding too hard in her ears. “I never wanted to lie to Clarke. Even by omission.”

“But you did.”

Raven nodded once. “But I did, yes.” Her stare was unnerving. “Can I ask? Why haven´t you told her?”

With a shrug, Raven answered, “I´ve been you. Maybe not the same, but I´ve been in the system. I don´t know your situation, but I´m guessing there´s a reason you haven´t told her?”

Lexa nodded her head towards Aden and Raven turned her head to look where she indicated. Slowly, Lexa let out a breath, as if to brace herself to say the truth. “That´s Aden. He´s my little brother. We…we were separated once, in foster care. Neither of us had a good experience. This time…” Lexa watched Aden slide down the ladder, take a tool and start to climb again. He was so small. Still so small. “I wasn´t going to let that happen, not again.”

Raven was looking back at her and the gaze almost the hurt, the intensity burning through Lexa and cutting to the meat of her. “You panicked, that night in the bar. You were both runaways and thought we could let it slip.”

Lexa nodded.

Raven licked her lips. “Okay. Look,” she rested her elbows on the table, leaning forward, “I get how that happened. I would have done the same. I´ve been in the system. It can end well, sometimes. I was lucky, this time round. But it can be shit.” There was something in her eye the mirrored what Lexa saw in Aden´s, in Anya´s. In the mirror. Something hurt and beaten and bruised. Something too big for small shoulders. “So I get it. But Clarke…she´s pretty special. And she´s going to think you´ve not trusted her.”

Swallowing, Lexa held her eye. “It was for Aden.”

“I know.”

“I´ll tell her.”

Raven stood up. “Good. Because I lied to my friend the other night, and I don´t do that. Not to Clarke.”

They shared a look and Raven walked away to join Anya, who stood at the bottom of the stairs. Indra followed them with her eyes at they walked up and to the roof, only looking away to share a look with Lexa.

Lexa had to tell Clarke.

She had to, now.

 

* * *

 

They were meant to be meeting on the weekend, Clarke was going to stop by the bar. But it had been days since she´d last seen Lexa, and her body was humming with the need to be near her. All day she´d played back and forth between going to surprise her and sticking to the plan. When she´d left the house she´d paused on the doorstep, turning back to go inside and then facing the path again and again. Eventually, she´d sighed at herself and gotten on the bus.

It was hard, not being able to message her, or Facebook her. To have no contact. But in some ways, it was refreshing. Everything about her life in every other way was instant: school, mobile, Internet, people…when she saw Lexa for the first time in days, watching her smile slowly unfurl and feeling a flip in her stomach, it felt true; earned.

She couldn´t stay long. Clarke had to study and she thought tonight she´d sit next to her mother on the couch and actually watch something together. To not feel the space pulling between them. To let her mother´s shoulder brush her own and maybe share something that had felt beyond them, that Clarke had thought had broken apart, irreparable; dust scattered on the floor.

It was early enough in the week that the bar was almost empty, with only a few regulars that Clarke recognised. With a start and an inward chuckle, she realised she was a regular, if she could recognise others. Lincoln was at the bar, chatting to one of the men and nodded at Clarke as she walked in. He glanced back towards the office door then gestured to the end of the bar with a nod. When she sat down, he put a coke down in front of her with a wink and she thanked him, watching him move up and down the bar, wiping surfaces.

“Is Lexa here?”

It would be a pity if she hadn´t had to work today. Clarke had taken the risk, pouring over her index cards on the bus to make herself feel like it wouldn´t be a waste of time if she didn´t see Lexa.

He gave her a soft smile and a nod, and not for the first time, Clarke could see what Octavia saw in him. He was attractive, that was obvious, but not really her type: big and looming and so muscled. But there was a softness to him. A month ago, she´d found out he liked to draw and the two of them had spent hours talking about art. Watching him with her best friend was one of her favourite things; he was so calm and relaxed, where Octavia was brash and always pushing boundaries. But whatever she did, he always nodded along and helped where he could.

Bellamy hated him and had tried to do the big brother speech on one of his visits home and Lincoln had simply responded that Octavia was her own woman and she made her rules, and that Lincoln would be around as long as she wanted him.

There hadn´t been a lot Bellamy could say to that. Octavia had levelled a glare on him that had made Clarke shift in her sheet, and she hadn´t even been on the receiving end.

“She´s here. She´ll be out in a minute.”

“Thanks.”

Lincoln went up the other end of the bar, unstacking glasses. Something made Clarke turn around and when she did, Lexa was stepping through the office door, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of Clarke, the door snicking closed behind her.

 

* * *

 

“Clarke.”

The name slipped from Lexa´s lips like it always did: unbidden, easily, as if anything to do with Clarke, Lexa couldn´t help.

Which was true: when it came to Clarke, Lexa was powerless.

She was on a stool, twisted around to watch Lexa and her heart sped up, Lexa wondering if that feeling would ever go away. Aden was in the office behind her, one of the days he´d wanted to come and Lexa hadn´t wanted to say no. Having him here, while worrying after the night awhile back, was easier for Lexa: she missed him when he was gone, and her entire body was tense until she caught sight of him again. When she knew he was close, she could focus more, relax and move through the day.

But Clarke didn´t know about him, and while this would probably be the perfect opportunity to tell her—especially because she´d promised Raven she would as soon as possible—Lexa had wanted to when Aden wasn´t there, to give her time to adjust to what Lexa had to say before holding Aden out like an unwanted surprise. It was easier, to keep it all from her now, despite the guilt that licked at Lexa´s insides. There was no rejection when Lexa didn´t offer anything up to reject.

Clarke smiled at her and Lexa returned it, walking forward and kissing her, their lips melding together for too short a period.

“This is a surprise.”

Clarke grinned. “A good one?”

Lexa kissed her, an answer enough that drew out a contented hum from Clarke.

“I missed you.”

The murmur of the words against Lexa´s lips was as good as a kiss, the words breathed into her mouth to swallow and keep for later. To wrap around her lungs and breathe in, when later she was in the warehouse, too hot and tired and nervous about life, she´d pull out the memory of those words and the way they whispered over Lexa´s tongue and everything would ease.

What if Clarke ran? What if this truth was too much? Enough to weigh them down, a secret or a betrayal?

“Are you okay?” Clarke had pulled away, cool air swirling around Lexa´s hot cheeks.

“I need to tell you something.”

Clarke cocked her head, looking at her, her eyes so blue Lexa felt like she could tip forward fall into the never ending depth of them. When she´d been small, she had loved to spin as fast as she could until she fell, landing heavy on the grass and the blue of the sky swirling above and the sky had been endless and that´s how Lexa felt with Clarke: like everything was endless while it swirled around and around.

“Okay.”

Later, Lexa would realise she heard the door open, swinging to slam against the wall it was pushed so hard. At the time, she was busy gathering the words, a swarm in her chest, trying to figure out how to tell Clarke that one of the first things she´d really told her had been a lie, and that Clarke knew nothing of Lexa´s life. But, she would plead, she knew _Lexa_ and Lexa knew _Clarke_. Not for the first time, she was wishing she was at school, maybe in the locker room and pulling off her cleats, sweaty from training and sharing a smile with Clarke when she walked in after PE.

Or sharing kisses behind stacks of books in the library.

Or sharing notes in lockers.

Sharing a life in general, one that melded and fit and didn´t clash so badly it left everything feeling like it wavered.

Maybe they´d be arguing because they shared exam time and were stressed, unsure and panicked and whispering apologies later as they shed clothes in Clarke´s bedroom, trying to be quiet but giggles spilling over.

“I want everyone out.”

The voice was loud and the words took a second to click. Lexa turned and everything inside her went cold, frozen. Under her hand, Clarke´s thigh twitched as she turned to look at who had spoken and caught Lexa´s attention. There were five men, their faces pasty and white and glistening with nervous sweat. Each held something in their hands, a length of metal, a plank of wood, a bat. One of them was smacking a pry bar against his leg, another against the palm of his opposite hand.

The one in the middle, his eyes going from Lincoln to Lexa, she recognised as one of the men that she´d knocked out when he´d tried to mug her.

Her stomach turned to stone and the weight of it jarred her, froze her in place.

She´d done everything to keep Aden and Clarke out of this world that lurked in the streets she lived in, but you couldn´t keep something out of the habitat it roamed.

Lincoln caught her eye, the muscle in his jaw clenching. Every hair on Lexa´s arm stood on end.

“You heard me! If you ain´t a worker here, out.” The man looked back to Lexa. “´Cept that blond one, since you seem so fond of her.”

The regulars hovered a minute, looking from one group of people to another.

“Go.” Lincoln´s voice was low, a sound Lexa recognised, and one by one they slid off their stools and left.

“Let her go.” Lexa stared at them, unblinking. “She´s just a customer.”

Her heart was in her throat. The man sneered at her. “No.”

Lexa dug her fingers into Clarke´s leg.

Aden.

“Who are they?” Clarke asked, a waver in her voice.

Lexa had heard Clarke angry, sad, and, recently, happy…but never scared, and the note struck a chord that left Lexa´s ears ringing.

“The men that gave me a black eye.”

Their ringleader snorted. “You gave us all a concussion.”

Clarke was looking from them to Lexa and it felt like everything was coming undone, unwinding in front of her.

Aden and Clarke needed to leave. They needed to get somewhere. But they didn´t know Aden was here.

Did she call attention to that fact or leave him where he was, for now, safe?

She looked to Lincoln again, who had raised his hands and was slowly walking towards Lexa and Clarke, distancing himself from the men.

“Come on guys. The girl´s got nothing to do with any of this.”

“Neither do some of my boys here.” He cocked his head. “That don´t seem to matter.”

That sneer was something Lexa wanted to rip off their faces.

Lincoln ducked under the bar, standing next to Lexa as they both shifted slightly to stand just in front of Clarke. There was a back exit, through the storage room. If they could distract them enough, maybe she could get Clarke to grab Aden and get out of there.

Would there be enough time?

“What do you want?” Lexa asked.

“Payback. See, it took me a few days, once that concussion wore off, but I recognised who we´d tried to mug. I realised he,” he indicated with the bat in his hand to Lincoln, jabbing it into the air, “was a part of that bitch´s group who turned me away. Then you all had the gall to knock us out.”

“You had the gall to try take our shit.” Lexa stared him town. “Leave now, and it´s even.”

Clarke. Aden.

He snorted, the guys behind him shifting uneasily, bodies leaning forward. The sound of a door opening behind her made Lexa close her eyes for a second and take a deep breath.

“Lexa?”

He knew not to come out.

Never come out. That was the rule.

“I heard yelling.”

Lexa opened her eyes, not looking away from the men in front of her. “Go back, Aden.”

“No.”

Lincoln turned. “Aden, little dude, go back.”

Steps. Small and light, and the brush of his shoulder as he stood next to her.

“No.”

Lexa put her arm over his chest, her hand cupping his opposite shoulder. For only a second, before she tugged him towards and behind her to stand next to Clarke, she felt his heart through his small chest, pounding hard and fast against her forearm.

“Get the fuck outta here, kid.” The man narrowed his eyes. “One chance.”

Aden and Clarke behind them.

Men with weapons in front.

Aden didn´t move and before Lexa could tell Clarke to grab him and take him through the back, the men stepped forward as one, weapons raised, and instincts brought Lexa in step with Lincoln as he moved forward.

She ducked a swing and heard a crack as Lincoln´s fist collided with someone´s nose. Her foot connected with someone´s groin, the skin giving under it easily and stealing all his breath.

“Get out, Aden!” Lexa ducked again as two swung in unison and she could feel the air caress her head as they moved over her, skimming her skull and just missing. “Clarke! Take him out the back!”

Blinding pain lanced over her back as something hit her hard. For a terrifying minute, her breath stilled, her chest spasming and finally, she gulped air and Lexa turned quickly, her foot rounding in a kick and she hit the person over the head and kicked again, landing square in his chest. Her back was screaming. Lincoln had blood over his eye. A fist hit her ribs. Someone swung again and Lexa danced back just as a small blur stepped in front of her.

“Aden!”

She tried to grip his shirt, to wrench him backwards and all but throw him at Clarke but he danced forward, the material falling uselessly past the tips of her fingers. He ducked a swing and landed a fist right in the man´s solar plexus. It was beautiful and everything they´d taught him but he was an eight year old boy and they were grown men and the man flung his hand out, catching Aden in the face in a backhanded motion from a two by four. Her brother fell to his knees and Lexa felt like the world bottomed out, like everything lurched under her. She stepped forward, over her brother so he was half between her legs, jabbed out with her fist to catch the man in the throat, then used his gasp for air to hit him square in the head. He went down, hard, and she kicked again, red behind her eyelids and desperation in her swing.

Aden was still on his knees which meant he was okay, for now, and Lexa stepped so he was behind her, and she was between the two guys left standing. Lincoln was breathing hard, one eye closed and she didn´t watch him anymore as he stepped towards one. The guy in front of her was her age, maybe younger. Peach fuzz graced his chin. His eyes were wide, his hands twisting on the handle of the bat in his grip. His gaze darted to the floor where his friends lay groaning and back to Lexa.

“You can run.” She offered, the sight of his youth, the look in his eye too much like her own.

“Fuck you.”

He stepped forward, his shoulder dipping to indicate his swing and the direction. There was nothing trained about him. About any of them. They all fought with fury, with anger. With confidence of their numbers. Lexa fought with the idea that Clarke was behind her and Aden had been hit in the head and with training from someone like Lincoln and Gustus and Anya. She ducked once, twice, stepped into his space with her shoulder, driving it into his chest and brought her heel up, taking out his nose. When he bent forward and his hands came up to cup it instinctively, she drove her elbow down onto his neck.

He dropped like a stone.

Lincoln was standing over another, chest heaving for air.

Lexa spun and dropped to a knee, cupping Aden´s cheeks, her fingers trembling. Red was blooming over his cheek and eye, swollen already, his gaze blurry. He blinked almost lazily.

“Aden. Are you okay?”

He swayed a little, then Lexa wanted to shake him as a smile crawled on his lips, even as they quivered. “I hit him.”

She nodded. “You did. And he hit you. Shit, Aden, what were you thinking?”

His lip really was trembling now, his eyes glimmering and Lexa felt her throat tighten, sick to her stomach at the memory of how his head had whipped back, the yelp that had fallen from his mouth. “They hit you.”

His voice broke over the word and Lexa pulled him towards her, wrapping her arms around him as he buried his face into her neck. She looked up at Clarke, her eyes wide, pupils so blown her eyes seemed black. Clarke who was fine and not bloody or hit or touched. Her phone was to her ear as she stared at Lexa. There were no words to drag up and throw at Clarke. Lexa had nothing, nothing to say. Adrenaline was pumping through her blood, layering her arteries and leaving her breathless, sick with it, with the memory of skin giving under her fist and her brother´s red eye and Lincoln´s blood. Of a horrified shout as something had struck Lexa´s back, that she was just now realising was Clarke´s.

"Are you okay?"

Clarke nodded, the motion jerky and unsure but it had to be enough.

“Who have you called, Clarke?”

Clarke swallowed, and Lexa could see her fingers shaking from there. “The police.”

Lexa thought her heart stopped. “The police?”

Clarke nodded, her brow furrowed as she looked from Lexa to Lincoln. “Yeah, of course.”

Lexa didn´t let go of Aden, turning to stare at Lincoln. He looked down at her. “Go through the back.”

“What about this?” Lexa indicated to the groaning men on the ground.

Lincoln nudged one with his foot, the man already trying to get to his knees. “Get your friends up, and get out. The cops are on their way.”

“You called the fucking cops?” The man slurred the words, and something angry in Lexa hoped his jaw was broken.

Lincoln´s voice stayed low, chilled. “Get. Out.” He looked back to Lexa, his eyes softening. “The back. Go. Now. I´ll handle this.”

Lexa wrapped her arms around Aden tighter and stood up, grunting as she pulled him up with her. He wrapped his legs, too long for this but too small for what had just ocurred, around her waist and she knew something was wrong when he didn´t protest to her carrying him out.

Not looking at Clarke, she walked past her. She could feel Aden´s heart, a comfort in its thumping, against her own chest.

What had just happened? How had this happened?

“Follow me.” She grunted. And Clarke did.

Lexa went through the door to the storage room and out the door to the alley, fear crawling up her spine.

Cops and an underage runaway with her runaway eight year old brother.

“Lexa!”

Clarke´s voice was like a whip and Lexa felt herself crack in the middle at the sound of it. Her back was protesting, an ache so deep she was worried she´d drop Aden, her ribs felt like they were on fire.

Turning, Clarke was staring at her, and Lexa wanted to move towards her, to let out this feeling filling her chest and finally sob, to burst against Clarke´s neck and let her run her fingers through her hair.

But that was not Lexa´s life.

But the police were coming and Aden was injured and so was Lexa and she had to move, now.

“Clarke, I have to go.”

And Lexa hated herself, that those were her words.

“Why? The police are, are on their way. They´ll help.”

“No, they wont.” She let Aden slide down her body and he leant heavily against her, swaying slightly. She gripped him as close as she good. “Clarke, I have to go. I´m not in foster care, I never was, I ran. I didn´t want to do it again. I took Aden and ran, he´s my brother. We´ve been on the street, Lincoln´s been helping me. Anya too, and some others you don´t know. But if they see us, a minor with her kid brother, we´ll be back in the system. I have to go.”

Aden´s fingers clutched her shirt, digging into the skin of Lexa´s belly, grounding her, reminding her he was there. That he was why she had to walk away from Clarke right then, in a moment she knew was the worst to do so. Clarke deserved so much more than that.

“Lexa…”

Something was breaking over Clarke´s face and Lexa couldn´t stay to see it unfold. She couldn´t catch her as she fell apart, or stand while she yelled, or even take her help. Lexa needed to go.

“Clarke, go up the alley to the front of the bar. Tell the cops you heard yelling and called them, but saw nothing. Lincoln will do the rest. I have to go.”

Lexa bent her knees, tugging Aden back up and, again, he didn´t protest but wrapped himself around her. Concern pressed at her temples but for now, she needed to get them away, to the warehouse. Anywhere but there. A siren wailed, the sound bouncing off the walls, blue and red light filling the space. In her arms, Aden trembled, his face pressing into her neck. She heard, so softly Clarke wouldn´t, “No. Not again.” And his fingers grasped her back and pressed their chests closer together and her heart broke at words she´d heard what felt like forever ago.

In the red and blue, Clarke looked at her like she didn´t know her, and it was with that image that Lexa turned and walked the other way, to stumble through the hole in the wire and clutch Aden closer.

She didn´t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback loved, as ever. Hope you don´t all hate me.


End file.
